a remote 3D design platform for the game industry
Ekoo
Remote 3D Character pipeline is broken...

Animators who design 3D character animations cannot visualize, understand, and organize the annotation from teams due to the online limitations.

How could we make a more effective multi-disciplinary collaboration tool to help remote game design teams work together more creatively and efficiently?

the interviews

After conducting several rounds of interviews with designers and stakeholders at major game companies, I found out the pain points were close to our secondary research.

Game Studios

Office
art director
concept designer
animator
giving feedbacks
prototyping Animation
explaining prototype
target user

Therefore, our target user will be concentrate on mainly three characters in the industry. Which is Art Director, Concept Designer and Animator.

problem
Animation teams are having a hard time to see the same picture within 3D assets remotely, which leads to a lot of back and forth process and crunch time.
the red PLACE HAVE MANY BACK AND FORTH that ekoo can help with
THE UsER FLOW
How the system connects together.
the future

We envision annotation with hand gesture control in synchronous working scenarios for more intuitive interaction with 3D space in the future of EKOO.


However, due to time limitations, we have only experimented with a few options that require further evaluation. If I had more time, I would schedule more usability studies to evaluate my concepts.

Introducing EKOO
The real time 3D character pipeline tool
1.Real time collab
2.Easy to control
3.Fast iteration
what is EKOO.
The best remote collaboration tool for animation pipeline.

Remote Collaboration

Seamless interaction that bringing real-world intuitiveness to remote collaboration

03
3D annotation
Annotation wherever you want on the model, synchronized with the team in real-time
02
Version Control
A interactive project management system to assist team manageing various assets
01
01
opportunity

Imagine how you, as the art director, could describe this animation accurately to your designers so that there would be fewer misunderstandings.

- Llia 3D Artist at Blizzard Entertainment
If we use just words and simple gestures to describe an animation, 100 people will come up with 100 different visuals in their heads

02
opportunity
How you organize feedbacks from different people and make sure the team can all catch up with each other's ideas??
Imagine you as the designer, after receiving these sketches from the art director, you have a total of 10 different feedbacks now.

Uploading and sharing the asset with your team with status and tags that communicate the status and the needs for the asset clearly.
upload jobs

Easily checking the peer feedbacks on the page, including the sketch, posture, and note, which tells you exactly how to modify the assets.

browsing feedback
Game Design Document

The game design document platform organizes the animation assets, annotations, and team collaborations. All in one, with no need to worry about moving files and documents between apps and losing them.

Make an annotation by simply using the pen tool to draw over the character, like an art director does when they give feedback in person.
sketch annotation
Examples are important. Pick a place on the character, and annotate with an image of your preferred pose into the note with text description.
note annotation
Can’t sketch? Annotating by simply dragging the head, arms, and legs of the character to communicate your desired posture.
posture annotation
editor Annotation
Annotating beyond text, you can make annotations by sketching on 3D modal, adjusting the posture of the character, and spotting the note in a specific location in space.
Gesture Control Library
Without a mouse? Try hand gesture control, which is an easy and intuitive way to interact with the model.
SELECT + COMFIRM
PLAY + PAUSE
ZOOM IN + OUT
UNDO
SPEED CONTROL
ROTATE + PAN

the impact

EKOO will not only solve the problems of people working during the pandemic, but also enable more collaborative process in the game industry and transform the way how people work and design the 3D space.

what i learn

How to use data to drive design decisions


During design process, I need to ask myself questions such as “ who, what, when, how” from the data collected. The team iterate the feature and experience according to user insights in an agile way.


Being empathic with users and their pain points


In this project, I enjoy thinking the product holistically and listening to the users’ experience, feedbacks, and being an active listener.
It helps me understand the users’ pain points and create empathy with them.

game design document
key iteration

What is the feedback that powered the integration of the Game Design Document feature? Users were asked to perform the following tasks. The iteration is based on the data collected from the performance of the UI during the tasks.

Task 1: You want to find the feedbacks that art director leaves to you.
Task 2: You want to glance the content of the feedbacks and see is there anything important that you need to check in right now.
Task 3: Click into the editor page for the detail of the feedbacks.
“The art director leaves plenty of feedbacks, definetly more than 4, so more space is needed for display the content”
feedback

Integrating the person who notes feedback, thumbnail images, and the importance of tasks into the model.

interation

screen real estate not enough for the feedbacks

lack of context of the feedback

“Hard to aware the target locations of the feedbacks, maybe some thumbnail image will help.”
feedback
Integrating the person who note the feedbacks, thumbnail image for the target assets, and the important of the task on the model.
interation

Final version, synchronizing all project information in one place.

the final version
editor
key iteration

In the testing, the user is asked to perform the following tasks. The iteration is based on the data collected in the performance of the UI during the task.
This frame is weird and you want to draw on the screen to correct the movement.
The movement between 1 second to 2 second needs to speed up, please leave this note to that period.
The arm movement at 4 seconds is wired and you want to attach a video file for the animator as an inspiration.
“Controlling the signle nodes of the bones is low efficient, and it is hard to control the posture in 3D all together.”
feedback

Adding key parameter controls for the posture.

interation
hard to manage the posture all together

Here is the final version of the feature, users can adjust the character to the desired posture by simply dragging the limps, changing the parameters, and viewing the comments.

The final version
“It is hard read content of the comments.”
feedback

Listing the comments and sorting by users in a new window attached on the left side.

interation

The comments section is hard to discover

UPLOAD ANIMATION
CHECK FEEDBACKS

gesture control library

detail
note anno.
easily adopted
EKOO is designed for the game indursty, connected with the tools that indursty need.
Adopt
efficiency boost for wFH
EKOO will boost up to 40% of efficiency for the entertainment industy from working from home.
40%
game design documentation
EKOO will saving at least 3 hours per day on document and share game design assets.
3HRS
what i learned
I enjoyed the chance to look into the app's functionality in this project while also actively listening to the experiences and stories of the users.  It makes it easier for me to comprehend the user's problem, and think the same way as the user.
May - Aug 2021
Time
Game Industry
Industry
Role
Researcher, UX UI Design, Gesture Control Prototyper

Haoran Xu, Zoe Zhang, Duoning Zhen, Cynthia Lee

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