For architectural firms, COVID-19 has been an opportunity to upskill and transform their design teams to respond to new challenges posed by the pandemic. This blog post takes a look at how firms are transforming their design practices to adapt to the post-COVID-19 era!
Raamesh Singhal Design
About Raamesh Singhal Design
Based out of Siliguri and Kolkata, Raamesh Singhal Design has been focusing on interior designing and architectural projects across North-East India and Bhutan for the past 20 years.
The firm specializes in residential projects -, bungalows, flats – of around 2000-3000 sq. ft. and hospitality projects. In recent years, Raamesh Singhal Design has adopted technology to enhance customer engagement, client satisfaction, reduce the time taken for creating renders, and communicate their designs effectively to their customers.
How has Raamesh Singhal Design been coping with COVID-19?
As a small design team based out of Siliguri, demonstrating the designs to clients was a challenge due to lack of tools which helped in doing so, there were obvious gaps in design that were emerging due to ineffective communication, specifically due to COVID-19.
To address the growing list of challenges, their team has very effectively used VR to explain design intent and collaborate with clients whilst adhering to the social distancing norms.
Traditional ways of design communication are no longer relevant:
Raamesh explains that “Renders done through V-Ray take a few hours and consume unnecessary time at each stage of the design.” With this shift away from the traditional approach, the time to create renders has decreased from 1-3 hours to just a few seconds.
360° virtual tours have served an excellent purpose in communicating the space of the project to the client and have improved customer engagement levels. VR also allows their team to make on-the-spot, real-time changes based on client feedback.
Smartworks
Smartworks builds fully serviced workspaces for rent across India. It offers a holistic experience to member companies by offering cost-effective solutions and a technology-driven environment, catering to the changing business dynamics and requirements, whether for an enterprise or an established start-up.
In less than three years, the brand has not only become a market leader in the country focusing on large enterprise clientele – with a bespoke, tech and productivity enabled value proposition but the only homegrown agile workspace provider to become profitable in India.
How their design team has coped with COVID-19?
Distributed across India, Smartworks was quick to cope with COVID-19. Their team used Trezi meetings for internal and external collaboration across geographies. Using Trezi, their design team has been able to reduce Smartworks’ sales cycle by half. Sign-off time is much less since the client is able to make faster decisions.
Team collaborations are also much easier and more efficient. Changes to design can be made and showcased to the client instantly via VR meetings. All members across the globe can enter the space and have design discussions in real-time, virtually. Acceleration in sales was also during COVID-19.
Their team speaks
We use Trezi for design presentations and collaboration with our internal team. The collaboration that we have done with our sales team has so far been super useful. I am impressed with the tool, mainly with the interaction that has been possible.
Till now, we have been doing design presentations with 3D visuals. With Trezi, we can have a live interaction, we can do a real-time revision. Now we spend much less time explaining it to my client. Most of the clients usually don’t understand the space and Trezi has been useful in explaining it to them. ”
– Niroopa Padmanabhan, Head of Design, Smartworks
Conclusion:
In conclusion,
Shifts in work culture will reshape and redefine workstyles – meetings, discussions, and even deliverables – as people move towards remote working, which may well become the default mode.
In fact, the transition from traditional workspaces to remote working should provide significant benefits in the long run – amongst them the reduction in traffic and even development across the country. It also allows remote employees to thrive and perform effectively while working from home.
Stay tuned for more updates from Trezi!
To experience a free 14-day trial using your own SteamVR-compatible Virtual Reality kit, please sign up here.
Or contact us to organize a demo at your office – our sales representative will set up an appointment at your convenience.
