Menu
In 2015, Lutz Luedtke – a startup founder on a mission – reached out to us with an idea. What if we use game technology to visualize folder structures more efficiently, allowing people to find what they are looking for faster?
The result was Data City: a system that visualizes large folder structures in 3D. Allow us to take you on the journey of developing Data City, from inception to the minimum viable product (MVP).
In this interview, Lutz Luedtke talks about his vision for Data City and how the project turned out.
This question led to a prototype in which we used dendrograms, a tree-like structure used to visualize complex data. These dendrograms served as the structure of a 3D folder viewer.
As Lutz and his colleague Christopher Gardeweg visited our office, we took them to Lesco, a restaurant with creative dishes near our Wetteren office: from left to right: Matthew Cormack, Bernard François, Christopher Gardeweg, Lutz Luedtke, Kasper Geeroms.
This viewer would analyze a location on the user’s hard drive and show folders and files as nodes, allowing users to apply various filters to narrow down to the view they need. Even though the initial idea was to map the data in the shape of a real-word tree, it became clear that it made more sense to use a flat structure to visualize this folder structure.
Because of this flat structure, the end result looked more like a city than a tree. The data nodes seemed like buildings of various heights and colors, the connections between them seemed like streets. Data City was born.
Five Iterations Leading up to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Through our iterative prototype development approach we created five iterations of Data City.
Iteration 1: In the first iteration, we created cylinders to represent folders and boxes to represent files. With roads between these structures we could show hierarchical links derived from the user’s folder structure. Via arrows on these roads, we illustrated the parent-child relation between files. Users could navigate the prototype using their mouse in a first-person view.
The first iteration of this prototype indicated that there was some potential in Lutz Luedtke’s idea.
Iteration 2: The second iteration of Data City mainly focussed on implementing a user interface. It gives users the ability to go more in-depth with their data by applying filters. It also included a tagging system. Users were able to assign relevant parameters to the visual aspects in their dendrograms. In addition to this, we implemented advanced features, allowing them to save the data structures that were generated and create multiple dendrograms based on different folders.
The second iteration improved the usability of the prototype by adding a new UI and allowing users to save their dendrograms.
Iteration 3: This iteration included smaller usability improvements, like the ability to more easily set a file as the starting point of a new dendrogram. It also improved the way file names were displayed by making them adapt to the angle from which a user is viewing a file.
The third iteration mainly focussed on some usability improvements.
Iteration 4: The fourth iteration put the “Viable” in Minimum Viable Product with an actual license key system, allowing Lutz to sell licenses for the software. In addition to this, we cleaned up the UI, and started experimenting with VR. Based on the first use cases of the MVP, we implemented some more usability options.
In the fourth iteration we started to experiment with data visualization in VR.
Lutz and his business partner Christopher Gardeweg wanted to take Data City a step further by unlocking it from the restraints of a desktop computer. They were inspired by other VR projects we were working on at PreviewLabs and noticed an interest in this technology in industry and manufacturing businesses.
That’s why we built a limited version of the prototype for HTC Vive, allowing Lutz and Christopher to experiment with the concept in VR. It enabled them to explore the potential of VR for data visualization in manufacturing.
Conclusion
We will always remember Data City as a unique project that cleverly leveraged the concept of dendrograms to visualize complex data and file structures. Through five iterations leading up to a MVP we were able to create a visually appealing and user-friendly prototype. We fully explored the potential of using this data visualization system in a manufacturing context by creating a VR version in addition to the desktop version.
Do you, just like Lutz, have an interesting idea that you want to test? At PreviewLabs, we leverage the advantages of prototyping for various industries, including healthcare, academic research and gaming. Reach out and discover how we can help you bring your ideas to life.