Beyond Zoom: How Immersive Collaboration Works in The Wild

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How long should it take to go from one person’s sudden idea for a design to sharing a 3D mockup of the design with teammates in different offices?

No time at all, insists Gabe Paez, Founder and CEO of The Wild, a virtual-reality software company in Portland, OR. “The goal is to shorten the time from idea to shared experience, until it’s as close to instantaneous as possible,” says Paez.

Paez and his team have aimed to make the design process as collaborative and intuitive as sharing a Google Doc. “Space is content for us,” he says.

The Wild works with a range of companies to bring them into the world of collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) design. Many are major players in the architectural, engineering and construction industries, including Perkins & Will and PAE Engineers. But the company also helps giant home-improvement retailer Lowe’s, footwear manufacturer Adidas, and telecommunications leader Verizon, among others, to come up with new products, as well as retailing concepts.

Paez notes he and his colleagues at The Wild are constantly meeting and collaborating with teams from these and other companies, which are scattered around the U.S. and world. But no one has to get on a plane to do it. The collaborators simply don virtual-reality headsets and meet in VR space. “There’ll never be a jet that travels fast enough to bring people together as quickly as VR does,” says Paez.

When a VR meeting is aimed at coming up with a new design, be it for a skyscraper or a shoe, the collaborators gather virtually in a computer-generated space called the workshop. There, each person appears as a cartoon-like “avatar,” and the group gathers around a virtual table. Anyone in the group can then take a try at an initial “massing”—that is, creating a shape intended to be a first, rough idea for a design.

Normally designers do massing by themselves with easily-shaped materials such as foam, clay, or balsa wood. Then, when they feel they have a good start, they can show it to other team members for feedback. Gathering feedback from all involved might take days or even weeks. But in meetings in The Wild, the group sees massing together in real time, and anyone can try their hand at improvements or alternatives.

Perhaps most important, says Paez, VR collaboration enables team members to walk around designs together, looking at the design from different angles and at different scales, discussing their impressions and ideas. The ability to do that as a team inside a shared space—even if it’s a virtual one—allows the interaction to transcend discussions that take place over a Zoom meeting. “When you can move around and see other people who are there with you sharing the experience, you feel physically activated and emotionally stimulated,” he explains. “It’s a much more dynamic, rich interaction that can form more meaningful insights. You just can’t get that when you’re trapped behind the glass of a computer screen.”

The impact is especially large in designing buildings and spaces that can be entered and explored together, he notes. “You’re not just talking about the space,” he says. “You’re experiencing it as a group while all being fully connected in it and moving through it to see how it changes. Those sorts of spatial perceptions and connections help define our experiences in real life.”

Often a big benefit to come out of the VR design sessions is the gradual recognition by collaborators that a design that at first seemed like a winner actually has flaws that need to be ironed out. “Anyone who has done any remodeling in their homes knows that you don’t really appreciate what works and what doesn’t until you’ve lived in it for 30 days,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine how the nuances of a design will change, whether it’s the basic shape of the design, or just the placement of a light switch.”

With the ability to spend time in VR as a team exploring the design in repeated meetings, these sorts of problems gradually come to light. So, by the time a building is actually under construction, or a product is rolling off the assembly line, the results feel familiar to the team, and there are few if any surprises. “By then, the team feels it already has a relationship to the finished product,” says Paez. “That’s something that’s hard to do with foam.”