#UX/UI DESIGN #WEB DESIGN #MULTIMEDIA
VILLA I SALES TOUR
Creating a powerful sales tool
Long Bay Thrive villas is a large-scale architectural project by CITISPIRE involving master planning, landscape design, architecture, and interior design of a luxurious villa complex in the tropical paradise of Long Bay.
As the villas will be sold during the pandemic, the virtual sales tour was developed for multiple reasons. Firstly, traveling during the pandemic is difficult and this virtual tour lets the potential buyers explore the offering without leaving home. Secondly, the virtual tour will open the offering up to a global audience. creates a bigger demand and rises the value. Thirdly, trying out design ideas online makes the settling process faster and smoother for those who have already purchased the villas and helps to manage the resources better from afar.
The Role and process
In this project I worked with a team of game programmers, Unreal Engine Developers and architects, on building up an impactful virtual sales tour experience, creating an online user interface for the game, and testing out different features.
The project grew out of the research on the future hospitality market and generation Z's socio-economic behaviour that I conducted. As a result the research supported the original hypothesis of the need of virtual twinning services for resorts and hotels..
The next phase involved designing program and services structure, defining revenue streams and the detailed mechanics behind the service. During the process, I made an additional research on hospitality and gaming market to learn and implement the current systems to create a unique and advanced offering.
With the executive team we identified the goals and elements of the virtual tour, wrote the plot and dialogues, and wire framed the functions and interactions within the game. We also kept up to date with the visualization and development process, tested, and provided feedback for the smooth process.
Lastly, I was in charge of creating a promotional website for the resort destined to future investors. The website's main goal was to showcase the game, provide an entry point and basic information about the resort offering.
The Challenges
How to showcase the vibe?
As Villa 1 is a neighborhood of 38 villas, it was very important to showcase not only the real estate offering but the atmosphere and vibe within the resort.
For that we created a series non-player-characters who would interact with the player in a friendly manner, added activities, such as pool bar, party and fireworks, and designed the characters to express the creative, friendly and youthful spirit of the neighborhood.
Creating a globally inclusive experience
As the expected audience of the game is mostly, not-exclusively Chinese business class, we included multi-lingual functions to the game and to the online user interface. The characters were also designed to be of mixed ethnicities, and the users could define themselves with he/she/they pronouns.
The tone of the dialogues was inspired by high-end boutique hotel etiquette, being informal and friendly.
Informal and functional
As the virtual tour is destined for both, first-time explorers and villa owners who are going to use the application as a tool to make design and planning decisions, it was important to provide those who need, all the information necessary while not overwhelming the not-that-involved participants with unnecessary information.
For that we included user interactions where the player could choose whether they would like to see more information, such as plans, specs, prices, access editing mode, or just continue exploring.
We also created a multiplayer version for the game where real meetings with developers, teams, and co-buyers can take place.
To adapt to the pace of the world, we included the VR functionality to the game, for people who prefer this method for walking around.
As high end architectural company, we decided to set the focus on PC and VR instead of mobile, as for us, the high quality of the renderings is very important, and mobile apps would downgrade the quality.
Instead, we ensured that the website features plenty of high quality picture and video material and would invite people to take time and enjoy the virtual tour on full screen.
Building a convincing pitch
As the project was an additional feature to the real development project, it was important that the investors would fully understand the benefits of a virtual tour.
For that, we made a thorough market research based on similar projects, future predictions on Asian virtual real estate market, and gathered basis for strong argumentation for its necessity.
Lessons to take:
Be up-to-date
For a virtual interactive environment to serve its highest purpose it is important that it includes all the necessary functions that would benefit the user and without compromising the speed.
At this point where metaverse, and its supporting applications are being developed by thousands of companies across the world, finding the right plug-ins and solutions can turn into quite a journey, while being crucially important.
Instead of doing a focused search, I found adding a daily subscription to #metaverse and game technology related news very helpful for finding the best emerging players in the field, and appreciate live conversations where more questions can be answered than via emails or surfing the web.
Think years ahead
Being an idealist, I often came across with the fact that some of the desired solutions are not yet in the market. Still, it is important to develop the solutions as if they already existed, because they will.
