SPACECRAFT: A Peek Into the Future of Interior Design

Abstract

SPACECRAFT explores the potential integration of advanced 3D and AI technologies, including NeRF, LLMs and MR interfaces, to revolutionize the interior design experience for non-professionals. SPACECRAFT argues that these technologies can simplify the entire design process — from initial space scanning and design iteration to online purchasing—thereby enhancing user interaction and reducing the complexity traditionally associated with interior design.

The journey started with a real life struggle last year when I was moving to a new apartment I find out that designing. My new apartment is very tedious and time-consuming. and this is because the entire process is very fragmented and I have to jump between different tools and websites to make the right furniture and decor purchase decision.

For example, to measure the layout in dimension of my new apartment, I have to use a 3-D scanning app on my iPhone and to be honest the accuracy is not that great and the texture doesn’t reflect how it looks in real life at all. After that, I have to export the scan to my iPad so that I can draw out the design of the interior. And finally to make the right purchase, we have to jump between multiple websites and scroll through all the details to see if that furniture or decor fits our design.

And despite the low efficient and old school way of designing interiors, I see a lot of improvements in the field of technology and AI. For example, Scene Script, a research project by meta, has ability to figure out the interior furniture layout, as well as its shape in real time. and also, that goes without saying chat GPT and DallE has the ability to help people create design in the new way.

That makes me wonder what if I can utilize these technologies to improve the interior design process? And above is my thesis statement.

Introducing spacecraft, a speculative product that imagines future interior design experience for nonprofessionals.

Some of its features, including easy scan, furniture, cleanup, swap, the floors and walls AI assisted design and finally a integrated platform for easy purchase.

I started with user research because while building a product it is important to always start with the user even if it’s speculative, and then I did some technology research to figure out what is viable now and what is possible in the future, finally I did some competitive research to understand current industry practices, and gain insights from those practitioners.

Some of the interesting insights harnessed from using research are: 1. It is important to offer a set for customization because everyone has their own unique taste. 2. Most of the cases interior designers are only responsible for the vibe instead of the actual furniture sourcing. 3. and finally, it is important to let us choose instead of design because most of the users don’t have the professional knowledge to make the complex design decision.

I also mapped out a user journey to understand the process the goal and the potential technical solution so that I can drill down to the technical research later. and because this is a imaginary tech product so it is important to understand the technology trajection to underpin my thesis statement.

For 3-D scan technologies, I experimented with LIDAR scan, which is a traditional method of photography, and NeRF, a new message to represent3-D spaces, finally, the scene script research I mentioned earlier.

I also did some experiments on AIMML technologies like GPT four with vision model and generators 3-D products like Genie by LumaAI.

For the interfaces, I experimented with Apple vision Pro and met quest three to understand occur of MR. Technologies is advantages, disadvantages, current ability, and future possibilities.

In terms of the furniture search I specifically researched multi Moto search. This is a multi Moto search engine perplexity AI and as you can see AI back search now has a much better understanding of users intention, so that they can give the right choice in the ocean of information.

And finally is a competitive research. the major players in the industry are already beginning to experiment with some of the features I mentioned to streamline the design and sourcing process in interior design.

For example, planner 5D is trying to integrate a feature called AI designer. Although the fact that the so-called AI designer is just rule-based furniture placement and the choice of furniture is very limited, it is a good indicator of what’s possible once the technological problem has been solved in the future.