The New Boom: 3D Design
3D tiny cars to visualize in Uber, 3D Cards to personalize in Revolut, 3D Emojis to express emotions within Facebook. Have you noticed what these and other startups have in common lately? 3D as a tool of communication and engagement. If you haven’t dimension the size of improvements these elements have already brought to the digital experiences, why you should believe and bet for them, or even better, the world of opportunities left to be explored, here is a piece of thought that will allow you to.
A world with hundreds of new possibilities
The enhancement of rendering in mobile devices, the development of devices that analyze our surroundings like LiDAR of Apple and the improvement in the image interpretation through Artificial Intelligence, among other breakthroughs, opened a path to expand the use of 3D elements as a key component in the digital environment we live today. Startups such as Zenly evolved their app completely from 2D to 3D, allowing users to interact playfully with different elements of their experiences, becoming a UX reference among social apps. E-commerce platforms like Shopify are now supporting the visualization of products through 3D elements, motivating the users to freely position the camera at any angle and play with colors and materials in real-time, “letting consumers “try” it before buying it.”
When we add 3D elements in our portfolio of products or services, we are offered a box full of possibilities to explore, which have the potential to invite our users to enjoy spending quantity and quality time on our platforms. Why do we think about this? Let’s see… Imagine your customers going to your app or website, and as they move around in the screen, certain key 3D elements start moving synchronously, increasing interaction between them. Next, they go to the product they want to connect with and start personalizing it, changing aspects as colors and materials, making that object, theirs. Plus, factors like these certainly increase the engagement of your target with your products, don’t you think?
3D is a new paradigm that can allow you to stand out in a digital reality crowded by two dimensions, and thus, help you thrive. It does not only create better experiences for your users to enjoy your platforms, but it also facilitates your company the task of creating content.
As Harold Jiménez, our CTO in Makata Studio, shares: 3D elements are practical and versatile, they give you the possibility to change angles, attributes, gradients, materials and more, flexibly, allowing you to re-use them in different channels like apps, ads or even webpages. Just like what Pitch’s 3D designers created in their website pitch.com, without the need of re-creating each element multiple times. For example, once you’ve done a 3D arm the first time, you can easily duplicate it, change the tone of his skin in no time, add it some cool tattoos and rotate it to have an appealing composition. But this is not it. Why? Directly from the 3D software used, you can animate the arm and move its fingers. Why not a thumb up or even a middle finger? In no time, you can create two videos. No more jumps from a software to another. Efficient, right? This process is more practical in aspects like time, compared to the way it is done in traditional 2D software.
Training the eyes to spot gaps
As part of the industry, we need to continuously consider which are the experiences that we are providing our users to enjoy, to make them feel empowered, and bring delight to their user experience journey. In our case as Makata Studio, different and important highlights drove us to spot a new opportunity and incentive us to immerse ourselves in the market of 3D at the most perfect and convenient moment.
Everything started with 2 key companies: Zenly and Kapten. 2D was our biggest and most important asset in our portfolio, when we mastered it, we challenged ourselves to look for our next level as a company, and Zenly was key for that. Along the way, Kapten appeared with Remi Bardoux, Kapten’s Ex-Head of Product and now COO at Ulysse, inviting us to develop an important feature of their new platform re-design: 3D cars that will create a plus factor in the adventure of keeping up the rhythm of their competition, Uber and Lyft.
Multiple small events like these encouraged us to question ourselves, connect dots, recognize patterns, and spot a new trend and potential opportunity: 3D was going to be the next boom.
AR Filters, ads, or interactive websites: 3D is a versatile and eye-catching way to manage the graphic contents of companies, offering customers around the world the possibility to engage with our platforms more dynamically, creating at the end, more meaningful and deeper connections with them.
But hey! It is not time to settle down. Perhaps we should keep thinking outside the box and apply 3D in different industries for different purposes: maybe as a way of communication, expression, interaction, creation, or even innovation, everything to improve even more the quality and impact of the work. Let’s speculate together and find out which is the next level for 3D! In our team, we have got a quick guess: What if interactive 3D can support the democratization of digital experiences as tools to replace physical working or academic practices? Imagine you’re a medicine student, and today your anatomy class is in a VR world. The professor shows to everybody a healthy animated lung in 3D floating in the middle of the scene and compares it with a lung of a 70 years old smoker. Everybody can duplicate the lungs, manipulate them, and go through each detail!
What about you? What are your guesses? We want to hear from you!
And remember, there is no limit… there is a world left to be explored in 3 dimensions.
