As Umdasch Group we opened our first building in the Metaverse. We erected (or better said designed and uploaded) a building on four virtual parcels near the central „Genesis Place“ in Decentraland.

Decentraland is a metaverse platform in 3D virtual reality with about 90,000 parcels. It is one of the biggest and most famous platforms. Users and organizations can buy virtual real estate assets (as NFTSs) paying with the platform token MANA and can upload their buildings for interactions with user.

The Decentraland is a social Metaverse. Users can enter with their avatar and visit the buildings and locations. They can interact with other users (chat, video call) or experience something in the buildings, e.g. Play in the casino, visit a gallery, join events, buy NFTs, play games or get infotained by brands.

There are two main reasons why we decided for Decentraland.

• First, it is decentralized. It is not owned by one person or organization, but by the community who votes to take decisions.
• Second, it is not focusing on games but also on other use cases. We did not want to invest in a gaming platform but more with a business aspect to address a broader target group.

Decentraland is still in beta.

• It required extremely high CPU/GPU power due to the real time rendering of the world. Therefore, it cannot be accessed with a standard PC.
• Due to the real time rendering and streaming, it has to be optimized in the 3D design. For this reason, the number of polygons per parcel are limited which leads to a old-style quality and low resolution of the 3D world (lowpoly).
• A disadvantage of Decentraland is unavailability of a mobile version or app yet. So you can only enter via Desktop although most people prefer and use mobile.

We need a shift in the paradigm, everything is possible. Many designers still design buildings like in the real world but we can design everything . We are not limited to structural designs and physical laws.

We also have to re-think. Unlike in the real world, you do not need chairs and sofas to rest because your avatar does not need to rest. The requirements of people are different than in the real world.

Virtual Reality requires different UX principles. Decentraland gives a good guideline what do consider, e.g. Wayfinding, teleportation.

Thinking of designing the Metaverse space, the building was designed indeed a bit abstractly, however, all architecture and design are UI/UX design by planning circulation, such as stairs, lifts, and ramps that visitors can easily access in everyday life. In addition, the space design has orientation and wayfinding by accommodating the band colors of sub-divisions of Umdasch Group.

The main concept of architectural design is sustainability, and considers the issue of the marine ecosystem, which is becoming a global issue. In particular, the symbiosis relationship between coral reefs, marine creatures that use them as living spaces, and coral reefs that reproduce and coexist using those creatures, the structure of the growing coral reef structurally supports the entire building. The articulated structural design is coordinated with the architectural design that represents the earth, the source of our ecosystem.

In particular, the idea of the interior space was designed by embodying the coexistence and development of all departments of Umdasch Group as a global leading corporation.

For the user journey we used common virtual elements like teleportation, invisible colliders to avoid falling down and gamification – the challenge is to jump over three elevator platforms to get up.

Concept of the Umdasch Group Building:

The mission of Umdasch Group is „we create spaces“. Besides physical spaces, we are also aiming to design virtual spaces.

As Umdasch Group coming from architecture, interior design and building with a strong focus on digitalization with have the optimal mix of competences to explore the metaverse. A strong team of architects, 3D designers, software developers, UX designers, brand experts, engineers with passion for gaming and employees with personal experiences in cryptocurrencies and NFTs developed our concept and implemented it within 5 months.

The multifunctional und of course virtual team with experts from Umdasch Group Ventures, Doka and Umdasch The Store Makers worked in a project with following tasks:

• Development of the concept
• Clarification of legal and compliance issues (AML, trade rights, data protection …)
• Buying of the land (select land, get wallet, get cryptos, transaction)
• Development of the user journey
• 3D design of the building
• Upload of the building and a lot of functional testing
• Final upload