#14 Exploring the Metaverse: The Intersection of Storytelling, UX Design, and Immersive Web
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And I think with the Metaverse, a new category of e-commerce experience will start where beside the normal webshop, which is efficient, we can create showrooms where we can present physical products in a new way, in a more experiential way, where we can provide, for example, fashion launches in a very interactive way.

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Future4x podcast, where we explore the latest trends and innovations in technology. My name is Patricia Reiners and I am your host for this podcast.

In today's episode we have Burkhard Müller with us. He's the chief digital officer at Mutabor in Hamburg. And there he's focusing on society-centered design, Web3 and metaverse projects. Burkhard is considered to be one of the leading voices in his field. And in this interview we talk about the metaverse and what actually is important right now for us as designers.

We also talk about the importance of immersion and how the internet might evolve in the next decade. This episode is packed with lots of tips and insights. So sit back, relax and join us as we learn from Burkhard Müller. I would say before we dive really deep into the topic of the metaverse,

Let's clarify real quick what the metaverse actually is. And I know that everyone I talk to or everyone has their own opinion and their own thoughts about how it looked like. So I'm curious, how do you describe the metaverse and how do you think it actually differs from AR/VR? Okay, thanks for the tough question for the beginning. So I would say society hasn't

isn't sure what the metaverse is yet. It is currently a buzzword for everything that is more or less a gamified world, which is digital. And we put all the buzzwords in it. I remember when Adidas started with their NFT project, this was enter the metaverse and we connected it to NFT. And then there came many platforms that try to provide

digital 3D worlds to users and that this is the metaverse. I love the description from the CEO of Snap who says that the metaverse is not a thing, that it's a moment in time when

and especially the moment in time when people spend more time in or through digital worlds than in the real world. So when you have more than 50% of the time you are awake and you spend them in front of your screen or with lenses, glasses, something like this, then you are in the metaverse. But from a technical perspective, I would say

The metaverse is when you have

a virtual or a digital world where you can walk through and meet different people, where you're not alone, where you can interact with different people and a world that is interconnected with other worlds. We all know something like virtual guided tours or something like this, which are closed. And I would say from today's perspective, when you can enter such a three-dimensional room,

But you can, for example, collect digital assets and take them to another place. Then it comes close to a metaverse because it's not just isolated and locked into one room. Okay. So how would that actually work in the future? I mean, we are not quite there yet, right? Like at the moment, all the metaverses are a little bit more like separated. They're not...

together so you can't really move any assets from one metaverse to the other one. So what would we need to have from your experience to get to that place where it's all interconnected? I think this is something the blockchain can solve.

The blockchain currently, you need to be very tech savvy to understand everything. And you really have to take time to understand everything with your wallet and to connect it and to set up a secure wallet.

But I understand the blockchain more or less like a backend or an API as a standard where we know how to communicate and this is a uniformed language where in

In world A, I can collect any digital asset, a digital t-shirt for example, and when it's saved on the blockchain, I can log in on another platform and this can read on the blockchain which assets are in my wallet and display this as well. This doesn't solve how we render it, but this is more or less like a backend to which every platform can speak with.

Just for, because I know that a lot of people who are also listening to this podcast, they have a lot of questions and doubts about how this actually works, right? Because it's like, it's so complex. There's a lot of discussion going on, also on LinkedIn, on Twitter, not so much on Instagram, but people, and I think especially designers, are very curious to understand

how to get a foot in the door, as you say in Germany, right? How can you as an individual get started and become a part of that movement where you really understand how the blockchain works, how the metaverse interact with each other, how to create digital assets? So what would you say, what would be a good step to be a part of that vision of that movement?

Well, normally I would say just try out and try, fail and learn. When it comes to designers,

I always like to recommend them to play around with free platforms where you can't lose anything and where you don't have to spend a ton of money. We now jumped into the blockchain thing, but I would say the metaverse today and the most interesting part for designers are virtual and 3D worlds, which don't necessarily need blockchain and wallet and everything.

And there are platforms like OnCyber or Spatial which are free to use.

and which provide very simple environments where you as a designer can log in or register an account, use a free space and design it. Or when you are capable of designing 3D rooms on your own, then you can upload spaces and you have the complete environment where you have avatars and logins and you can directly publish it to the public and anyone can see what you create.

And I think this is a great start for designers or agencies or companies to try out. And how do you do that at Mutabor, like with the clients that you're working with? Do you also use like Spatial on cyber or do you create your own work? How does the process look like there?

Last summer we had a nice project. The Art Directors Club from Germany asked us if we could design a virtual gallery because the Art Directors Club every year awards the best design and advertising cases from Germany. And they wanted to do an exhibition in a special environment.

And we thought, yeah, this might be a nice idea because the Art Directors Club has a gallery on the web, which is very convenient. You can search, you find everything. So when you want to find quickly some of the works, you can just go on the website and have an archive where you find everything very fast.

that this is not the same like walking through a museum where the art or the work and the cases are displayed and where you meet other people and talk with them about this.

So we said, okay, this would be a nice use case to do a first project and to create a nice, simple metaverse. As they don't have a ton of money, we looked for a platform where we don't need development capacities, where we just need design capacities, in this case a 3D designer.

And in this case, we worked with Spatial. At that time, that was the most easy platform. And yeah, we had two 3D designers.

and an architect working on this project. We had the idea that we wanted to do something iconic, something that you can't do in the physical world. And we took the iconic Elbtunnel from Hamburg, which is a tunnel under the Elbe, here in Hamburg.

We took this architecture, which everyone who's from Hamburg knows it, and adapted it to a metaverse look, which looked a little more futuristic. And we put windows in it so that you can walk through and see the ocean above. And the workflow was quite easy. We started with the architects who built the fundament and they rebuilt the tunnel. And then we had our

In Cinema 4D, they built it in a standard 3D program. In this case, it was Cinema 4D. And then we had our 3D artist who did the lightning, the texturing, adapted the architecture that it fits to an avatar walking through it and that it's suitable for an exhibition where you put the frames in and videos in this case.

And then the workflow was quite easy. You just have to export the 3D model into one specific file type, upload it, and then you can test it directly on the platform.

Yeah, and we did this, I guess it took around five weeks, not full time, but over a time of five weeks, we tested a lot, tested with the textures. In all those platforms, you are limited that you can just upload a room with up to 40 megabytes. So you can't do anything. You have to find ways to create a nice look with limitation of data.

But over the time we found a nice look how we can do the lightning and present the different artworks. And the most interesting part then was when we tested this with people from our agency, we wanted to do a load test if everything works fine when we are not alone, but when we are up to 40, 50 people in this room.

And this was a nice thing with the platform that you just need to upload the file, you send everyone one hyperlink, they open it in their browser and boom, they are into the room and yeah, you can interact with the people.

It always sounds a bit strange when you talk about this and don't experience it on your own. That's really a completely different experience because you meet everyone, you can move, you can interact together, you can talk together. It's a little like a Zoom call or a Teams call, but you have

you have a brighter experience because you can walk together with the people, you hear them differently comparing how far you are away. So you have the feeling of a room and just the feeling of meeting people and experiencing something together.

And when we launched the project, we did this with that we invited press and people who were interested. And then we made a guided tour where people were able to log in and we welcomed them and we showed them the different cases who were exhibited in the room.

and also help them to get in first expression, ask them questions. All the stuff is not possible on a normal website, but this is possible in the physical world and in a metaverse like this. I mean, that sounds like a really cool project. And I think you really got the most out of this tool, also Spatial, to really try it out and test it. I think also the scenario makes total sense, right?

a museum the cool thing about it is that you really focus on one art piece you go like you go in a group you have guided tours and you really have conversations like this definitely doesn't work in a zoom call like that it's like it's totally different so super cool what would you what would you say like

You know, going through the five weeks, what were like maybe challenges or learnings you had in this process of building it up or some things that maybe surprised you that were that you didn't really think about before? Were there anything? What we experienced was that we are currently in a phase where we try to replicate the real world.

So we always tried to build an environment that we understand because we know it from the real world. And of course, when we started with the designing process, we had many fancy ideas. But when we showed it to different people and it was too far away from what we know today,

it felt strange for them and they didn't feel familiar. And I had to, in this case, I had to think about the time when we started to design for smartphones. At the beginning, we had this square morph design where the button looked like a button with physical edges and everything. And we tried to build all the interfaces and create connections to the real world which people understand.

Today, this is no issue anymore. We know when there is a blue letter or just a flat button, people learn how to interact with us and we can freak out with design. People understand the concept.

And I can imagine that this is the same happening to the metaverse. Now we build rooms which have a roof and which have a floor and where we can walk through like in the real world. But I think over the time when we get used to it, we are completely free. There are not necessarily physics or weather. It's not warm or cold. We can do anything. We can create any room. And I think then it's becoming interesting

when we have this curve where we learned how to interact in such places, even non-gamers learned how to interact in such places, then it becomes interesting because completely new concepts can come up. Concepts we can't have in the real world, we only can have in the metaverse. And this is something we learned in this process that we can't freak out completely now, but we are coming there.

Wow. Honestly, I think like also from a UX perspective, this is so fascinating and exciting for me to even think about it and hear about it. Like really thinking about new patterns, how people really interact with content or with digital assets is so exciting for me to even think about, right? Because at the moment, I don't know how you see that, but yeah,

We have all the same patterns for all web experiences, for all apps. It's all the same and they're copying each other. And some freshness would be nice in a way that it's not confusing. What I'm seeing, this is the other direction where some websites are going currently, which is totally confusing and just a little bit counterintuitive. So

How do you think? Yeah. What do you think about that? Especially comparing web experiences to the metaverse and then including your ex at some point? I mean, your background is your ex. So how do you see that? I think the web like we know it today

will stay because it is very efficient. We optimized it over the last over 20 years and found a way how we can, for example, shopping, we can shop in the most efficient way. We find any product, we find everything, we have patterns. Everyone learns, understands and can use very intuitively. This is going to stay.

But with Metaverse, I'm sure that the new category of web is going to start. Maybe we call it the immersive web. I don't know what naming is going to come up, but I always like to compare this to the real world. There are supermarkets which are

Very, very efficient. You have some straight lines, you walk through everything, the structure and you find in the most convenient way everything you need. And in best cases, you have a self-checkout where you can very fast. You don't even need to interact with any people.

But we also have flagship stores and malls where we take time and we use our free time. We get inspired. We have more like showrooming where we don't necessarily directly buy products, but we have an experience, meet other people, get entertained.

And this is something, especially in e-commerce, we don't really have today. Of course, there is social commerce with videos, but still it's very efficient. And I think with the metaverse, a new category of e-commerce experience will start.

where besides the normal webshop, which is efficient, we can create showrooms where we can present physical products in a new way, in a more experiential way, where we can provide, for example, fashion launches in a very interactive way, where you can meet people, present them in a way you could never do in the real world.

You can meet other people, talk with them, interact with them. And this is something where I can imagine that e-commerce is coming to a new level. Interesting. I mean, that makes total sense. And I know that some companies like Lacoste or H&M

also some other brands are already trying to experiment with this concept. What do you think personally about their approaches of building mini metaverses where you can explore their newest fashion lines? I know this is just the very first step, but what do you think about what they are currently doing in the web?

I think it's very important that there are the first movers. They get a lot of press for this. I don't think that they earn a ton of money with this concept, but they are the first movers.

And it's important that the big companies start because at the beginning it's always very expensive to build a new 3D space, a complex world and everything. They have to invest a lot of money to find out the new concepts as we're talking also about UX.

We don't know what the best concepts are for users to guide them through a virtual store, for example. Currently, the best concept is to have a host, a person which is there live and helping the people by talking to them. That's currently the best concept. We know this from shops. There are also people who guide you through the shop and consult you and help you. This is currently what we see.

In most cases, on the other hand, there are many concepts like the Lacoste store, which is very nice because they also add virtual assets. They not only have physical assets, they also have digital assets. But in that case, sometimes you are alone. And this feels exactly the same like when you go in the city in a store and you are the only person in the room.

This feels very strange. And this is something we have to solve and where we have to find UX solutions, how we don't give people who enter a virtual store that they feel alone.

There could be different solutions. This could be like it's time limited, that's not open 24/7, but this is the benefit of the internet that you could always enter. Maybe you have artificial avatars walking through it that you just don't feel alone, but they are not real. So this is going to become very interesting what concept helps people. And the second part is

As I said, we currently need the very wealthy companies to start through, but platforms like OnCyber and Spatial are very cost efficient.

This year we are going to see many, many small companies who are innovative, who try out because they don't have to invest money to build the infrastructure on their own. They can use platforms like this and play around. And this is a great time to be alive because we can be part of creating this new part of the Internet.

I think you mentioned something very interesting, like being part of that early stage, that new internet.

And when I'm thinking back about, for example, the beginning of social media, for example, there were some things that could have done-- some designers who should have said, oh, wow, maybe we should never add endless scrolling. Maybe we should-- all these kind of things. So I'm wondering, especially for the metaverse, because there are so many controversial discussions about it and very important ones.

But what do you think are really important things that we, especially as designers, right? Because we are the ones who consult the clients how to develop the experiences. What should we have? What should we bring into the conversation or what should we have in mind when we create these experiences? What we need is a proper onboarding. And this is something...

many metaverses today don't do. You enter a link, you enter your name, maybe add an avatar, and then you are in the world. And then what you do? I think what we need is a good storytelling. Gamers are very used to this. When you start a game,

In many cases, it starts like a movie where you get an idea of the world where you are in, you understand the problems, you understand your character. And after a few minutes, then you start and you know, okay, this is the concept where I am and what I do. And I think we can learn.

a lot from gaming, how to give the people an idea of the world you are going to enter and an idea of the character you play and the

the possibilities and the tasks you have by giving them a nice onboarding through storytelling. And I think storytelling is a skill which is going to be very, very important in these cases. Also music. Music is so important to create an immersive experience.

So I think UX is going to become important for many more skills that in the past only helped in the end of the process. So we built a website and then we wanted to add some fancy stuff, some nice sounds and maybe some nice copies. Today, I think in the near future, we need them at the beginning. They have to be part of the whole process.

I have actually two questions. So the first is, do you think people are willing to spend several minutes on an onboarding? And the second question is, how do we learn, especially as designers, to include storytelling and basically all the things that we need from gaming, like the interactions and all these kind of things? So how can designers

learn these kind of skills, right? Because currently, a lot of your ex-designers are really focusing on the usability primarily, not so much on the storytelling. But let's go back to the first question. Do you think people are willing to spend so much time on an onboarding? I think people are going to do this because I think the web in the future is going to be more than just a convenient web.

And it's true that the biggest part of our job in the past was optimizing to be very efficient and to more decrease screen time. But we know this from gaming that people love to spend time, it's relaxing. I think there is a new category of experience in games where you love to spend time and where it's more relaxing. And then a good storytelling is key

But I think you don't enter a metaverse to be efficient and fast. You enter it to have a nice experience, to have a good time. Like entering a great showroom where

where a suitcase from Remover is presented in an artistic way. You don't do this, you won't compare this to entering the supermarket. It's like you stand there, you listen to the story behind of this art piece, you want to understand this.

And I think this is what now is entering the Internet and we can be part of this in creating these experiences you in the past only were able to experience in the physical world, but now also in the digital world. Does this make sense for you? Yeah. So you really believe in the concept that we have

some kind of like two different kind of internets. First is like the very efficient one where usability is still the focus, like what we have at the moment with like websites or your smartphones. And then we have like some kind of like a second separated or maybe interconnected one that is about like immersive experiences. It's about storytelling and experiences, which is maybe less overloaded.

but really focused on an experience like a game right like where you just have one game you don't play seven several games at the same time right like you would never do that but on the web it's different you have like several top tabs open where you like switch in between okay yeah that makes sense and then we have the second question which is skills

so especially storytelling creating this interactive 3d animations and stories kind of um so how do you do that as a designer or especially as a ux designer who are currently is focusing on like user flows on wireframes on all these kind of things but you know that the future of the metaverse or the future is coming and you want to get ready

How should you prepare yourself to be a part of that and to be a good consultant when it comes to the metaverse? I can't give a proper answer yet, but I think or I can imagine that artificial intelligence is going to close exactly this gap because it's very hard to learn to illustrate. It's very hard to learn 3D design.

all the stuff. But we currently see how many AI tools are popping up that democratize all these skills. This doesn't mean that we don't need 3D designers, illustrators, etc. But as a UX designer, if you just want to do a proof of concept,

I'm pretty sure that we're going to have different tools that give us the capability that we enter a prompt and then you get a simple 3D model where you can prototype with and that you have the tools where you just simply add your designs and can try with this.

So I personally would focus on this development and watch these tools because it takes years, many, many years to learn this and to get there at a high quality. But these AI tools help you to speed up and to build great prototypes in hours. Yeah. And I think this is also like an important thing, prototyping, right?

showing or really presenting your ideas in an appropriate way, which is really difficult for like three-dimensional ideas or also stories, interactive experiences. Of course, you can use pen and paper or maybe a Figma prototype, but it's not the same.

And you need to explain the story that you want to create. Interactive would be great because you also need to test it at some point, right? Like you still need user testing to make sure that it works like you thought it would.

Yeah, definitely. And still, this doesn't mean that you don't need to learn to sketch or something like this. It always helps when you are able to just work with pen and paper. I still think this is the best way to get things out of your head. But when it comes to visualizing something, creating a prototype or helping to enrich your ideas,

I really believe that AI is going to help UX designers to get out of wireframes and create more complex concepts. Interesting. Yeah, there's so much discussion at the moment, especially on LinkedIn, I feel about AI tools. Is it useful? Isn't it useful? Is it maybe even dangerous with data privacy issues and legal issues?

And how can we really include that in our workflow? I mean, we are just in the beginning and I think it's super important to highlight all the opportunities that are coming with it that

we don't know yet how it will look like but we definitely need to follow and see how and when to include them right and yeah definitely and I as a from a designer's perspective this is a very huge topic with uh for especially a legal topic but from a designer's perspective and when we focus on prototyping

that it doesn't matter that much. And then I would see it as a shortcut. It's more like not an artificial intelligence. It's more like an augmented intelligence. It's a tool that helps you to think faster, to work faster, to get everything out of your head in a very, very fast way, which doesn't mean that you should

deploy this to the public, but it helps you to present your concept in a safe environment. And you don't need five or ten people around you to get your idea to the paper. And I think this is going to help us so much to create completely new experiences, even when you are alone. Yeah. I mean, that's also an interesting point, right?

creating these kind of experiences, you usually needed a team, like a copywriter, like someone who prototypes it for you. Maybe someone who even codes it that you can test it, someone who does the research. So maybe in the near future, you just need one freelancer or one designer who can do all the things. Not as good as a whole team for sure, but maybe to prepare a first concept and a first draft, a first pitch maybe. How do you see...

How do you see that going? I mean, you're working at an agency, so you have really big teams. How do you deal with these new tools?

You just mentioned it. In the past, I always loved to present my ideas with a scribble. I was never a big fan of going to Google and search for images or create a real design when you have an idea and want to pitch this. I always worked with illustrators who did nice sketches and where you knew, okay, this is not final, but this is presented in a

in a nice way, which is more a compliment also to the clients when we present them something that is not Googled images or stock images where they have the feeling that it always feels a bit strange to present concepts like this. They don't feel that they are worth it. And with artificial intelligence, for example, we use Midjourney

You can create really nice images and very special or weird images which suit your concept, which help to sell your concept and your ideas. So in this case, we cut off the illustrator we had in the past and we always hired for maybe two days when we had a pitch. Now we can do this internally.

story for the illustrators, we still book them for the final artwork. But this is something that makes totally more sense to do this directly in the team with tools like this. Yeah, I mean, yeah, 100%, even if it's just a pitch, right? So it doesn't need to be 100% perfect illustrations like from a professional, but more vision, more like quick and dirty.

And that's the same when we write copies, for example, a wireframe for a website and you know, okay, this is the website for a product XY. And then you go to ChatGPT and tell them, okay, write a bullet list for this product or write a short description of the benefits of it. And it's quite good.

faster and in many cases better than when you brief a person which wasn't involved before within the pitch. This always takes hours to brief someone very good and to get a great copy. So it speeds up so much, especially in the concept phase.

And I always want to highlight this doesn't replace copywriters, this doesn't replace illustrators, but it replaces the necessity and the concept phase where it doesn't need to be perfect. Yeah. Also, it gives you or all of us more resources for user testing to iterate, to change and then know what you really need.

Yeah, great, great point. More money for testing and also more money for execution to create in the end to go the last 10% that are in many, many, many projects when you run out of budget, that you have more budget for the final product.

And I mean, every creative knows how it feels like if you're working on a pitch and they don't choose it, but you worked maybe a week on the illustrations and you get paid, but it never sees the light of days. I don't know if you say it like that, but you know what I mean, right? Like it's, you work for the bin. And I think this is so, so, so frustrating for all creatives. So maybe just like shifting budgets and priorities makes sense.

a lot of sense. So this is not scary for anyone, but I think just a really good vision moving into the future as well. Definitely. And on the same page, I'm curious if tools like all these AI tools like Midjourney, DALI, etc., if the skills innovation, I don't know yet. Currently, it's great what you get out of it, but maybe we come to the point

where it's better not to use the machines. I don't know yet. Currently, it's great to be faster, but maybe we come to the point in a year or two where we say, okay, it's better to take another week and maybe to think a little more than just writing three prompts and taking the nicest image.

I'm very curious where the development goes, but as I said before, it's a great time to be alive because there's so much changing currently. And I think it's our job as designers to use this for the better. We shouldn't use this to stress us even more and to do

do two or three projects at the time of one. This shouldn't be the solution. We should use it to create greater stuff, to increase quality, to increase the experience for the user and not to do a project at a quarter of the cost than before, because then quality is going to get down and I guess we are going to burn out.

And this is a big problem for creatives, also for designers, right? So it's a really good point what you're mentioning. I just want to talk about another topic. I mean, we briefly talked about it and I'm super curious to hear your thoughts about that.

So we already talked about like the two versions of the internet, right? Let's talk a little bit about the old version, the usability version, which still has screen and web pages and is still a little bit like the boring task efficient web. How do you see that evolving? Do you see us in like 10, 20 years still having a phone, a MacBook, screens, and

Or how do you see that changing in the next decades? I mean, of course, we all don't know, right? When clients ask me today what the next big thing is, and especially in the conversation about the metaverse, I like to mention or I like to raise the question, what comes after the smartphone?

And 15 years back, it would have been strange to tell someone your grandparents are going to send you a WhatsApp and emojis. Today it's completely normal. It's strange for no one. Or I remember, I don't know, less than ten years ago, but it was really strange to see people recording voice messages and sending them. It was very hard to do this. Today it's completely normal.

I think we are going to know in the next months if Apple is going to release any kind of glasses and if this is going to disrupt the smartphone. I think the next two or three years we are safe and the convenient web is going to stay. I can also imagine that it's going to stay even longer because we always need some kind of convenience.

And maybe just the hardware is going to move. Even when we believe in the concept of glasses that replace the smartphone because they are more convenient, they are always there. You can switch between real world and augmented world or complete virtual worlds. Even there,

it's necessary to have something like a simple paper with information where you can scroll through. So I think what we learned and what we created the past 30 years for the Internet

will stay, but the hardware will change. And when the smartphone and the iPad and everything came, we need to learn to do everything responsive that it fits to any screen size. Previously, we designed web pages in one screen size, maybe in two. But today it's completely normal to do something responsive. So maybe in the next years we learn that

that we still have websites, but they can have immersive images, that they have 3D elements. And when you have a smartphone, then it's displayed in two dimensions. And when you have a lens, then it's maybe immersive in three dimensions.

I could imagine that it's evolving in such a direction, but I still think that the skills and everything we learned is still useful in a world where we don't have laptops or smartphones, but where we have lenses. We always are going to need convenient information and fast e-commerce and everything. Okay, interesting.

Okay, so you mentioned that you think like the skills will be very similar to what we need at the moment. Maybe you have like at the end of this interview some tips also for listeners or for young designers or UX designers who are really curious about the future and about what's coming.

Do you have some tips about what kind of skills would be helpful for them to dive deeper into, especially from your experience working on these projects, working with clients, also with the people in your team? What kind of tip would you give them? Where should they dive a little bit deeper into?

okay maybe i sound like an old guy but what i really benefited from was stuff like art history color theory typography all the traditional skills um helped me to understand aesthetics and stuff like this

I see this with many young designers that say directly jump to the fancy tools, which are awesome and help to create nice looking stuff fast. But as designers, we have to go deeper. It's not enough to just use the tools and create in a short time something nice.

then you're just a tool, you're just using the tools. But as designers, we have to understand the concept of design. We have to understand what we present to our clients and go deeper. So I would always recommend use these latest tools, understand them, but you should always

have the willing to understand the concept behind and this starts with the absolute fundamentals that you know how to work with colors, how to create contrast, how to work with typography, how to work with forms. When you don't understand this, then an AI

is maybe better than you because it's faster and any person can click, can enter a prompt and choose what they like. But only as a designer when you can describe everything and when you really have an idea in mind and create exactly what you have in mind with your different tools than you are

When you have the skill, you are always ahead of time and then it doesn't matter which new fancy tools comes. You should always stick to the new tools and try them out, but always also teach yourself the traditional skills.

Honestly, I think that's an awesome tip. After you explorated a bit on it, it made a lot of sense for me because I can relate. I didn't really learn about like Gestalttheorie when I was studying. I learned about it after my studies. So when I was already working, which was so crazy, right? Because it's like the basics of design and going through all these theories and

made like, you know, I had so many aha moments and I finally understood also how to build interfaces. And now I actually had a course at the old university where I studied and I went through all these Gestalt theory, through all the different things of typography, of colors with them, because I think it's like the basics of

interfaces, how to design it and the psychology behind it to really understand it. Because in the end, it all goes back to human psychology, how people really seeing, interacting with content that will be the same in the real world, in the digital world or in the three-dimensional immersive world, right? So that's a really great tip, I think, for everyone who's starting out to go one step back

focus on the basics first and then you will become a better designer in the future. I have one last tip for me, as you told the story that you didn't learn at the beginning.

I personally didn't listen at the beginning. I didn't listen enough. But what helped me was photography. And I think designers today, many designers and many more people love to photograph. And this helped me a lot to understand how to work with colors, how to do compositions and everything. So photography helps a lot teaching all these basics. Great tip.

It's super interesting. Do you have some maybe some resources how you learn about this? Just like try and arrow or do you have some books or people or I don't know anyone who shares good content about these topics? Honestly, I don't know. I really like to try out, test and learn. And I learned from failure.

That's always a good approach. I think just trying things out. Good for our listeners. Super cool. So I would say, although there are so many more things that we could talk about, because there's so much...

that we need to know about the metaverse that's happening and that will happen in the future um i think we covered almost everything that i wanted to talk about so thank you so much for your time i really appreciate that and also for all the insight that you shared it was super super super valuable and interesting so thank you so much thank you thanks for having me

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