HoloLens / Dynamics 365 Layout

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Layout is a mixed-reality space planning application. You import 3D models and overlay them onto the room you are actually standing in through a HoloLens, then resize, rotate, and move them at full scale, so you can test a floorplan, run a fit study, or walk through a space before anything gets built. I designed two of its features: the item catalog, and how objects got from there into the room.

Joining the Layout team shortly after it had formed was an exciting time. There was a clear high-level idea for Layout, and an initial sense of who our customers would be. This included space planners, contractors, event coordinators, retail space designers, any profession that could benefit from creating a holographic 1:1 scale representation of a space complete with fixtures that could be critically evaluated before any sort of real world construction ever began.

The team formed around a strong idea and a rough sense of the customer. Turning that into a feature set took most of the first stretch of the project.

I looked at existing applications and real-world tools to see what they offered, and at modeling programs to understand how importing and exporting worked and how they handled shaders and materials. I also helped interview users and companies we thought could benefit from a holographic 1:1 representation of a space. The customer interviews and product demonstrations were some of my favourite parts of the job.

The Layout team and the HXT department ran a lot of brainstorming sessions together to narrow down the direction and the feature set.

My first prototype after joining was a test of how convincing holograms are when placed among real objects in a real room. Using Unity and a HoloLens I built a test scene with a couple of imported furniture models, a chair and a hanging wood wall cabinet. It worked, and it also surfaced problems we'd need to solve, like how poorly very dark textures read against a real environment.

Once the feature set was narrowed down we moved to proof-of-concept prototypes. The ones I built in Unity covered different catalog types and placing objects into the world.

Two of the features I owned were the item catalog and placing items from it into the workspace. To make large objects easier to handle, my design had you pull an item out of the catalog at miniature scale, with a wireframe box showing its true 1:1 footprint. Once you were happy with the position and placed it, it grew to full size.

The team settled on this catalog design after I'd left. Selecting an object at miniature scale and having it grow to 1:1 made it through as well.