Space Craft

A little Story

The pandemic has reshaped our approach to interior design, with a growing reliance on E-design due to limited access to event spaces and materials. However, existing E-design tools often lack user-friendliness and realism. This presents a challenge in effectively planning and furnishing event spaces.

During my research, I looked at different tools to see what they did well and why people liked them. But when I tried them out, I found they were often hard to use and didn't feel realistic. I wanted to create something simpler where users could plan their real-life events, like weddings or exhibitions, easily.

Why Space Craft?

Existing interior design tools are often complicated most times users need to watch series of videos, or even the fact that some are unrealistic and with limit to how the real environment looks like. Due to my passion for simplicity and my interest in the build environment sector. I wanted to make interior Design accessible to everyone. By the way I built the model below.

What Problem does Space Craft Solve?

The pandemic has reshaped our approach to interior design, with a growing reliance on E-design due to limited access to event spaces and materials. However, existing E-design tools often lack user-friendliness and realism. This presents a challenge in effectively planning and furnishing event spaces.

Concerns

At the beginning of this project there were questions like;

• Is this to take interior designers Job

• How will event Decorators get more jobs

This projects intends to improve client, interior designer and event decorator collaboration. Making Interior design accessible to everyone.

• To help users easily visualise and plan the layout of event centres to maximise productivity.

• To help minimise the time and cost spent searching for suitable event centres.

Initial Research

A lot or Interior Designers, Event Decorator, Event planner, MC, About to wed bride were interested in taking part in the initial stage of the research. Being able to hear different perspective, expectations, and experience really instrumental in creating this project

Design for Empathy

From the insight gathered from my potential users I worked on personas, user journeys, story boards and user flows. In order for me empathise with the users and make design decisions that are tailored to their needs.

Prioritising Features

To ensure Space Craft delivers the most value to its users while maintaining simplicity and usability, I employed an impact feasibility matrix.

This tool helped us prioritise features based on their potential impact and feasibility, ensuring we focused on the most beneficial and achievable enhancements.

Gathering More Insights

This was my first time designing for Virtual reality. I needed more insight on how creative direction for VR products are, what are the most used products when it come to VR, how do people find it etc

Attending the XR Festival in Belfast provided valuable insights for developing Space Craft. I experienced "Buried in the Rock," an immersive VR exploration of Tullyard cave, which highlighted the potential of VR for realistic event space previews. "Life Cycles" demonstrated the engaging power of interactive elements like hand tracking. These experiences informed Space Craft's VR Environment feature, ensuring it is both captivating and user-friendly. The festival reinforced the importance of integrating advanced VR technologies to create an engaging and intuitive design tool for event planning.

More Tools

The architectural Plan I used for the design I explored a new design tool called Rayon Design a architectural and interior design tool for drawing floor plans.

The presentation drawing was the vital part for this project, which I added the furnitures such as tables, carpet, WC, sinks, office desk and I drew some and designed in illustrator.

Solving A Egg and Chicken Problem

Being able to decide which user comes first was really difficult. I looked into how different competitors did it, Conducted a UX research to also understand UX patterns, considerations and even strength and weakness off each tool

Space AI Agent feature

Space Ai agent helps users to find event centres based on there specification, budget and it can also find the oen suited or similar to what would work for there dream event.

More Research

Designing for virtual reality and the mobile app was based on different users preference, affordability and Comfort. A good example is users would not be expected to use the VR headset while in there car, mobile app version of space craft will be used to make quick adjustment without access to the environment view which is a feature for the Virtual reality version

Key Features for MVP one

AI property agent: users can summarise what they want or how they want their wedding to look like then the AI agent will help provide event centres based on the users narration just like a human property agent.

Project Editor: users can design and plan events to suit what ever they want to use it for. with a comprehensive interior design library consisting of furnitures they can add to their design.

Event Estimator: users can make use of a calculator feature to see how much they have spent so far on interiors in order for them to maintain budget.

Order tracking: Users can track the interiors they rented so has to be sure it got to the event centre before the event.

VR Environment: while designing the space users can preview all the changes they make to be sure of what they are doing.

Catalogue: users can get a comprehensive list of all the interiors and also send it to the event decorator to carry out the designs

Organising an event

Users can design and plan events to suit what ever they want to use it for. with a comprehensive interior design library consisting of furnitures they can add to their design. Users can share the design, add collaborators, reduce number of seats, change sitting formation or arrangement, change colour of furnitures and access other interiors such has chairs, tables, flooring, decorations and they can also calculate how much they have spent so far in order not to go above budget.

Collaboration

After arranging the furniture for their event space, users can send a detailed catalogue to the event decorator for implementation. This catalogue includes descriptions of the furniture, materials, costs, and colour details, along with a button to access all dimensions of the event centre, ensuring accurate implementation of the design.

Advocating for Space Craft

I attended an industry evening for three days where I got to connect with people discuss what Space craft is trying to solve.

I also worked on a Launch strategy. The launch strategy for Space Craft is designed to maximise visibility, user engagement, and market penetration. I categorised my strategy into three parts which are ; pre launch strategy, Launch and post launch strategy.

I explored different ideas under this strategies such has; pop-up ads on event centre websites, app store, virtual reality product, promotional website, environmental ads, exhibition, influencers, social media post, merchandise and collaboration with event centres.

Testing

For my user testing I joined interior design, event decorators communities then got them to test the product I also talked to people who where about to get married since they are one of the most important potential users of the product.

Impact

• Users can now view event centres as much as they want from the comfort of there home without the need to pay

• No more waiting time on long list to view event centres users are now able to view online and book online

• Clients can now make there preference known to event decorators with Space Craft

Whats Next for Space Craft ?

• Centralised dashboard for Enterprise plan - those who acquire enterprise membership would be able to manage different event centre - specially made for event centre owners

• Rental management for event centres to order unavailable furniture’s according to clients specification

What I learnt

• Learned to manage complexities in creating mobile prototypes, emphasising the importance of iterative design and thorough testing.

• Conducted insightful interviews with event decorators, planners, interior designers, and soon-to-be brides to refine the project’s focus and ensure it met user needs effectively.

• Utilised Rayon Design for creating essential floor plans and Draft XR for developing immersive VR experiences, enhancing user interaction despite some technical challenges.

• Gained valuable experience in designing for VR, understanding the limitations and possibilities of Draft XR, which will benefit future projects.