What is the Digital Underground?
- A platform of Virtual Reality experiences, tools, and processes that help enable context, drive innovation and shorten speed to market for developing products and services.
- Custom VR experiences developed in Unity – leveraging a combination photogrammetry techniques and BIM models. This mechanism rendered highly realistic experiences where teams could perform user testing of new products (digital and physical) within a virtual hotel setting. This was highly effective at enabling very informed decision making, however expensive to produce and scale.
- The use of 3rd party tools to enable immersive walkthroughs and VR meetings using existing BIM models. The incorporation of these tools ultimately resulted in process changes that enabled a guest room redesign being approved entirely through virtual modelling of the space.
Role
Founder, Project Lead, and evangelist. I was able to acquire initial seed money through winning an internal innovation contest, build a small MVP prototype focused on scanning hotel rooms, and then successfully expand that into a broader platform of experiences called the Digital Underground.
Results
- Over 1,500 global 3D scans of hotel rooms, event spaces and common areas, including integration into Marriott Sales Companion (a standardized tool used for creating marketing packages for hotels).
- Custom developed 3D gallery iPad application. Used in sales presentations and for upselling rooms at the front desk.
- Physical build out of Digital Underground VR platform inside Marriott HQ lower level innovation lab. Setup included HTC Vive Pro Wireless, 4 Panel LG Video display for monitoring experience, and moveable wall panels.
- Custom Digital Underground VR experience testing platform developed in Unity .
- Incorporation of 3rd party rendering tools into existing design process .
- Leveraging partnership with Marriott Global Design team, was able to successfully receive brand approval for new hotel room prototype based entirely on testing in VR; resulting in significant cost and time savings.