Modular: The Future of Architectural Tools

The Project & the Challenge

Modular was a visioning and innovation effort launched by Autodesk. The challenge of the project was to leverage the subject matter expertise of thought leaders in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) fields to envision new tools and technologies to push the AEC industry forward.

My Role

As a user experience design intern and former architectural designer, I worked with Autodesk's design team to plan and facilitate a 3-day symposium, and to write and design the final artifacts for the project.

The Symposium and Workshops

The project was kicked off with a symposium that gathered thought leaders, innovators, designers, and technologists from the AEC industry to participate in lectures and workshops designed to ideate on concepts for the future of the industry. Along with Autodesk's UX team, I helped to design the symposium workshops' methods and content, which focused on themes of communication and collaboration, mobile technologies, and sustainability. The symposium consisted of multiple workshops where participants were prompted to respond to, and ideate on "thought starters" that focused on these themes.

Storyboarding: the Future of Architecture

Over the 3-day symposium, our participants generated multiple ideas for how future tools and technologies might change and improve the AEC industry — these concepts took the form of storyboards.

Iterating on the "Future Narratives"

With the guidance of our subject matter experts, we refined, edited, and shaped the storyboards into several "future narratives."

I then worked with our UX team to edit, finalize, and draw the final narratives you see below:

Project Outcomes

The narratives were shared across the company and symposium stakeholders, and served as the catalyst for several new innovation efforts that Autodesk has launched since 2012, including: the use of robots to take measurements of buildings to be remodeled, augmented reality technologies to help clients visualize finalized designs for buildings under construction, and communication technologies for globally-distributed architectural teams to share virtual 3-d models and project information.