Boathouse for Cardboard

Euro Offshore is a custom-made boat building company based in the Netherlands. They build and design tenders and professional workboats up to 22 meters. All boats are built with the necessary classifications, according to the specifications of the client and with the latest CE regulations.

They are unique with their ‘design your own tender in 8 steps’ method to build boats for the best value to money ratio.

Problem Definition

Building custom-made boats comes with challenges. Euro Offshore wants to make sure that the client gets exactly what they want before the building phase starts. Managing the client expectations in the design phase leads to lower failure cost in the building phase. This results in the following definition:

“How can we manage expectations and reduce failure costs during a project?”.

Given Solution

We, as Bricks & Goggles, came up with the idea to convert the 3D models of the boats into a Cardboard application for iPhone and Android smartphones. With this smartphone app Euro Offshore can send their clients the models of their boats to see if they meet their expectations.

Approach

We worked closely with the designers from Euro Offshore to convert the three 3D models of the boats into an application for iPhone and Android. The models where build using the CAD program RHINO. Our designers made a SketchUp drawing of a boathouse to provide an environment for the user to walk through and next to the boats.

Challenges

We worked by the philosophy “F**k it, ship it” and released several versions of the apps to see what quality we could get out of the GPU/CPU of the smartphones.

Next to the hardware capacity tests, we developed our own navigation that we use to walk through a virtual world. We coded a virtual waypoint system so that the user can look towards a point he wants and slowly start walking towards that position.

In order to keep the app stable during use we decided to make a function to change boats. We placed paintings of boats on the wall of the boathouse and used the same virtual waypoint system so that the user can select which boat he wants to see in the boathouse.

We conducted a study to find out which cardboard suited our needs best. We tried over 6 different types of cardboards until we choose with which one to go. We used a VRmaster cardboard and made a Euro Offshore brand identity design. These cardboards can be shipped within a week after the order is placed.

Results

The Euro Offshore Boathouse app was first shown on the Monaco Yacht Show in 2015. More than 100 people saw the boats from Euro Offshore through a cardboard.

The app gets at least 10 downloads a day from the iOS Appstore with an audience from all over the world.

The most important result is that Euro Offshore is able to place new boats in his apps and sent these to their clients so that they can see the result of Euro Offshore’s unique “design your own tender in 8 + 1(VR) steps” method.

Economic value

The economic value of the cardboard app for Euro Offshore lies in the conversation between designer and client. The client is able to walk through his ‘yet to build’ ship and spot imperfections and changes. This conversation results in a reduced failure costs of the project.

Other beneficial value’s for Euro Offshore are brand awareness for being known as an innovative company in a traditional market. On top of that it provides the sales representatives of Euro Offshore with a great tool to convince potential customers of their quality and craftsmanship.