Data to design: Using 3D avatars to assess and improve business relationships online
KEYWORDS. Avatars, Empathetic Computing, 3D, WebGL, Gamification, Personification, SaaS, CRM
ABSTRACT. In an increasingly digital first world, the importance of digital avatars in our daily lives looks to grow exponentially. With that, Empava is a first of it’s kind client management platform that converts client data from Salesforce and other CRM data sets into 3D avatars, creating a unique response based avatar for each client the company has. When inputting text based metrics such as last contact, time to respond, response sentiment, and other metrics and outputting that data in avatar form, the result is something much easier to understand and engage with. This is mainly due to the avatars being both a more visual and more empathetic approach to relationship management online.
Currently most account and client management is done working out of text-heavy, non visual tools, such as Salesforce and Excel spreadsheets. While Empava is still data driven, at the end of the day the user is human and emotions still drive actions. With this understanding, Empava is uniquely marrying data driven solutions with a strong emotional component through 3D visualization. Our avatars currently animate and display 6 unique moods all representing something actionable and unique for the account manager and team at large to note and act on. On the visual technical side, we are able to do this efficiently by converting our animated 3d models to glTF format using Unity. Because glTF stores the majority of data in a binary file, their size then becomes approximately five times smaller, this ensures each avatar and their accompanying moods are scalable, fluid and efficiently rendered. We then use Three.js library to render the scenes in our web application.
A question we asked ourselves when first building Empava was how would seeing a client’s email sitting in your inbox waiting for a response compare to seeing that client in 3D avatar form, expressing anger at you for not replying fast enough? Would the personification of your client and the mood on display inspire a quicker or more sympathetic response? To this point we’ve found the answer to be overwhelmingly yes. Empava relies on a combination of three core tenets, empathetic computing, personification of data and gamification of work to produce a new way of interacting and maintaining relationships online that more effectively inspire action, and more easily conveys instant insights to entire teams.
We are excited for both what this means for the client management and CRM industry but also for the 3D and data visualization field, as this is a milestone in using 3D avatars as a practical and data driven utility in the workplace.
If honored with the opportunity to have a presence at the conference or present we would ideally do so with a live presentation and or demo but can be flexible in that regard and happy to consider other means. For more information feel free to visit our teaser website at www.empava.io.