Autodesk Maya + zSpace

Description:

While our standard demos were hugely successful, we needed to prove that zSpace wasn't a toy. Based on market and user research, we decided to embed zSpace in Autodesk Maya to demonstrate zSpace's productivity gains in the Media&Entertainment market for 3d modelers and animators.

I conducted a workflow anaylsis of professional 3d modelers and animators while they executed simple, everyday tasks. The result of my analysis was a list of their most commonly-used Maya features and this list became our MVP.

To verify our MVP, I conducted a usability study on the Maya+zSpace product. The 12 subjects were professional 3d content creators. The study provided key insights to fine-tune our design and prioritization of feature enhancements including:

• Greater stylus tracking precision,
• Better emulation of current Maya functionality in zSpace-enabled modes,
• Enhanced ease in interacting with existing 2D UI, and
• More original 3d UI (3d context menus)

A second usability study was conducted on these new enhancements using Maya instructors (who also worked for companies such as Disney, Pixar, and ILM). This study confirmed our previous efforts, exposed areas needing greater effort, and produced detailed recommendations for turing Maya+zSpace into a product with distinct business value including:

• Core tools work well and provide more functionality that the standard Maya tools,
• The enhanced 2d UI work, 3d context menus, and 3d volumetric multiple selection were invaluable,
• Inspecting models in zSpace is much more immersive and useful than standard Maya,
• The learning curve is very manageable,
• More enhancements to the current tools is needed & more tools needed to be zSpace-enabled,
• Extreme zooming causes eye strain,
• Almost all tasks could be completed but task completion took 3x-8x longer than standard Maya

From this research, we concluded that creating a general-purpose tool would take more effort than zSpace was prepared to invest.

(The video examples provide the view from one 'eye' rather than a stereoscopic experience.)