Why A/B Testing Real-World Environments With Digital Twins Helps Scale Construction Projects
Construction projects have historically followed a design-build-experience process, where the home or structure is first designed by an architect, built by a developer, and then experienced by the end user(being the home buyer or tenants). With this approach, it can be difficult for customers to arrive at a unified vision and picture how everything will come together based on a mood board or a 2D floor plan. This often results in change orders or replacements of different finish selections, wasting on average 18%of capital expenditure on unnecessary rework.
To avoid this waste, leading builders and developers are taking a transformative approach to constructing projects: design, experience, then build. By allowing customers to experience the space in full 3D before construction begins, unified expectations can be created for all parties involved. This process has been named Experience Design and is becoming more popular in the industry.
The concept of ontological design is a particularly essential aspect of user experience design, particularly in the architecture, engineering, and construction, and operations (AECO) industry. It means that what we design in turn designs us back and has been around since the dawn of time. For example, the flow of a hospital's floor plan, where certain things are, where the equipment is, and where the emergency room is, all have to be designed with intentionality for the behaviors of what's going to take place in that space. This leads to unified expectations and helps users (e.g. surgeons, doctors, and nurses) serve their patients in the best possible way.
Aireal has been able to build on top of NVIDIA Omniverse, a platform for connecting, building and operating metaverse applications with the Universal SceneDescription (USD) framework, to create immersive experiences that allow people to walk around in full 3D and configure the space as well. The ability to measure in real time over 70 different metrics related to human behavior, engagement, and geo-intelligence gives design, planning, and construction teams more insight than ever before about how end users are interacting with a digital twin. A digital twin is a virtual representation of the physical environment.
By utilizing this technology to create digital twins of real-world environments, A/B testing can be implemented to allow customers to understand the space in a dimension they are most familiar with, make their selections, give their feedback, and ultimately land on something that all parties agree with. A/B testing is a process where two or more variations of a product, process, or design are tested against each other to determine which one performs better.
Spaces by Aireal is an AI-powered interior design tool that enables customers to upload any image of inspiration and our catalog, which involves full 3D digital assets from over 50 different furniture and decor companies.By leveraging NVIDIA technology like DeepSearch, customers can search and identify every single item in their uploaded image libraries. Based on the furniture and decor selected, Aireal’s Spaces tool will identify the optimal way to stage the space. This allows people to A/B test a space that has already been constructed to create a home that has the best flow based on their style and preferences.
By using digital twins to A/B test real-world environments, construction projects can be scaled more efficiently and effectively, reducing waste and ensuring that everyone involved is satisfied with the final product. The use of experience design and digital twins is revolutionizing the construction industry, making it possible to create and test unique and personalized spaces that meet the expectations of all parties involved, well before construction begins. By leveraging the power of AI and real-time data, builders and developers can create spaces that are not just functional but also aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. This is the future of construction, and Aireal is leading the way.
To learn more, view the Aireal recorded session at NVIDIA GTC, a global conference for the era of AI and the metaverse.
