Design Lead-Time Efficiency using Virtual Reality

For the VW Instagram #volkswagendesign2050 competition I wanted to see how quickly I could go from initial sketch ideas to presentation in VR and with renderings/animations. With this it could prove it to be a viable option to show quick models at an early stage, ideas that might not have been developed properly, but where the essence is still raw. In most traditional design flows a lot of ideas are filtered out early on, where there might be some that are worthwhile to see in a more realistic form.

In this case I doodled both on paper with pencil and pen as well as in #AliasSketchbook. I limited myself to an hour and did not venture out into rendering at all. Subsequently I developed the first rough model within the current VW ID3 dimensions. After looking at the model in Virtual Reality with the Oculus Rift I started making changes to adjust the highlights. Subsequently the main graphics of the greenhouse and cut lines were tried.

After a night sleep I went in a decided to start a new model to help me resolve the base shape of the front end. I could keep the greenhouse graphics but was able to create a more inspiring front end, This gave me a better balanced result and I finished that model with all the cut lines.

With the very tight deadline to the delivery date I went into Autodesk VRED with my studio environments to create the various images and VR animations to bring the message across. The total time for this was 5 business days from first sketch to uploading the images to Instagram. I realize it is not a finished design of course, but it gives a good basis to talk about, to look at and to develop new ideas from.