As part of the Innovation Labs at GroupM, I worked with a multidisciplinary team to develop concepts and solutions that demonstrate the potentional of the Metaverse as a tool in the marketing sector.
UX Designer,
Creative Director,
Digital Designer
Internship
5 months
Unity, Blender, Figma, Miro
The metaverse has been a developing concept in the previous years and has boomed in the marketing industry. However, there is so little done to really showcase the applications and capabilities of that realm.
Through various methodologies and research phases, the team aimed to visualize an XR(Mixed Reality) experience that can be incorporated for all kinds of sport brands. The experience focuses on encouraging physical activities for the end user while allowing brand marketing within itself.
During the first phase, the focus was mainly on exploring the Metaverse from different perspectives and finding the available opportunities to create something that can bring value to consumers, clients and GroupM as a marketing agency.
Using Miro boards, we brainstormed on which industries have the biggest opportunities at the moment with the Metaverse through the analysis of consumer trends and shared sample use cases.
To gain more insights about what are the consumer's perception about the Metaverse as well as their shopping behaviour, the team send out a survey and received around 70 responses. Additionally, interviews were conducted with marketeers of different companies as well as average consumers to gain deeper insights.
Due to the limited perception of the concept, many of the users view the Metaverse in a negative manner and do not see it having long-term potential, at least not yet. This further encourages us to research furthermore into how we can change their perception through the experience we are creating.
After exploring options within the Metaverse and formulating the general challenges that would be addressed as well as creating project goals, it was decided to ideally create 4 different experiences that can incorporate the various elements and ideas that can be implemented in the Metaverse. For the intial experience, we began with Nike and recreating their brand experience in the Metaverse.
The team used various research methods to collect data and insights for developing the concept. The business model canvas helped identify key features, activities, stakeholders, and thr target audience, resulting in a more refined and beneficial product for a specific sector of people. Personas provided a better understanding of the users and their challenges, enabling solutions to be provided.
The team used various research methods to collect data and insights for developing the concept. The business model canvas helped identify key features, activities, stakeholders, and thr target audience, resulting in a more refined and beneficial product for a specific sector of people. Personas provided a better understanding of the users and their challenges, enabling solutions to be provided.
Personas were created to identify relevant painpoints and opportunities for the target audience. The data was used in later stages to created informed design decision in developing the AR/VR product.
After testing and going through different tutorials, I tried to identify a way in which the nike concept experience that was modeled by our 3D designer to be transformed into AR.
Simply creating an experience for a single brand will not be as valuable for GroupM as an agency as each brand/client as they handle can have different challenges. Therefore, the team decided to take a step back and focus on the future of Sports & Wellness in the Metaverse.
Above you can see the initial design that was developed by the 3D designer, and I took part in how the user experience would look like. The design mainly compromised of creating a space where people can perform different interactions as well as seeing a space for brands to potentially put their products there.
The interview insights were helpful to understand how the experience the team is creating should look like and how it can address the pain points mentioned by the targeted users such as creating a solo exercise experience, and combining fitness and wellness together into a whole experience.
After refining our concept, the team had to fine-tune the digital space as well as find ways to convey the concept in an interesting manner.
After a series of peer reviews and testing we tried to identify what needed to be changed and improved in the digital space. As you can see above, the design has been completely changed and has been more focused with the user in mind. The distance between the spaces has been decreased and a simpler and more playful space has been created to avoid disorientation.
The space has also been fine tuned in many different aspects. First, the yoga area in the dome has been changed into a dance area due to the limitations of the available body animations in Mixamo, the platform for importing the animations. Below you will find the video of experiencing both the general and meditation space as a user.