All About the 3D Dream Sketcher

The 3D Dream Sketcher is an experience produced by Dassault Systèmes (3DS) with two main objectives:

– Increase online traffic and booth attendance during an event (such as the CES 2016),

– Crowdsource the value of an immersive ideation design tool targeting the general public as well as professional creative designers.

How Does It Work?

Users are asked to think of themselves in an imagined role, and then sketch it in the air. At the beginning of the experience, users are scanned by a pair of kinects so as to create an engaging starting point: their body!
The user sketches for 3.5 minutes while looking through a VR headset and using two hand-held controllers, as the public watches the scene through an external screen.
A 360° bullet-time animated gif is generated and uploaded onto the cloud, and an email containing a link to the gif is sent to the user.
The user can then give it a title, opt to make it public and share it through mail or on most social media.

Here is how it looked when embedded in Dassault Systemes’ website event page for CES 2016:

You can access the global gallery of all the sketches created so far here.

The Origins

The experience leverages the recently released HTC Vive Pre VR Headset and controllers along with earlier 3DS projects.
The first project, “Never Blind in VR”, explores how one relates to an immersive live representation of one’s own body. This actually showcased last year at the Laval Virtual Revolution competition.
The second, “BikePics”, examines the impact of augmented selfies shared on social networks. To have a deeper on this 3DXPERIENCE, you can either watch its video of go through this twitter wall.

Marketing Results

The 3D Dream Sketcher welcomed 220 users during the four days of the CES 2016, with impressive results in terms of traffic:

Firstly, it consistently drew throngs of visitors to the booth, proving that VR is a crowd-pleaser that helps brands to engage with captivated audiences.

The experience also contributed to significantly increasing the number of followers of 3DS digital channels on social media (sorry, but we can’t reveal the actual figure), with around 1,000,000 impressions, mostly through Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

Overview of the social campaign results

Outcome for a New Design Solution

This experience has shown us that using a user’s body scan is a good way to circumvent the “blank page syndrome”, while giving the user a better sense of scale and proportion. This is of particular interest for more “serious” applications where sketches are transformed into products or services.

We also received very interesting feedback on how sketching directly in 3D is of particular interest to users who find pen and paper drawing a challenge (it’s so much easier than drawing on paper)

In addition, “social media curation” worked extremely well: having the outcome of the experience sent to a social platform where in two clicks participants could share noteworthy results on social networks. In terms of product ideation research, this may present significant value.

Finally, the experience has shown to be of interest and potentially useful to professional creative designers.

The project is conducted under the 3DEXPERIENCE Lab framework, feeding the ideation theme.
This 3DEXPERIENCE is showcasing Dassault Systèmes’ innovations at several events:
– CES2016 (USA)
– Laval Virtual 2016 (France)
– Design in the age of Experience (Italy)
– Future en Seine (France)