I had the please of designing and developing a few solutions for T-Mobile over the years. This particular design challenge gave my team and I the opportunity to create a robust mobile-based virtual meet up app that allows Users to create realistic realtime avatars of themselves right on their phone. The goal is to show ‘near-future’ functionality of how business and casual interactions will evolve with T-Mobile 5G service and hardware in the mix.
The functional requirements were straightforward;
> Design & develop a mobile app for Android and Apple ioS for current phones that allow a User to create a custom avatar of their likeness for mixed reality (MR) metaverse experience.
> Once created, allow the User to spawn the avatar anywhere around them using the live camera feature to create the mixed reality scene.
> Allow the User to connect with other MeetUp App Users and spawn their avatar together in proximity of each other. Once spawned, allow the virtual avatars to interact, share files, discuss, and entertain.
These hyper-personalized moments are designed to show low/no-latency connectivity and a fluid on device experience with technology that fits in your pocket.
How personalized did we make it? We developed an avatar configurator that supported the following:
> Define User as male, female, non-binary
> Independent configurations for body shape, size, extensive catalog of hair styles, tops and bottoms (wardrobe)
> Pre-developed selection of dances and emotes.
Numerous case studies for engagements were scripted to allow T-Mobile guests to understand the ‘art of the possible’ from an engagement standard. Considering this was deployed as COVID-19 was descending on all of us, this deliverable was timely for the remote and hybrid worlds we have lived through.
