Digital Ecosystem for IoT Product Development

Partners who build smart IoT products need to test them in a realistic connected home. During the pandemic the showroom and all on-site work were out of reach.

So we replicated the actual showroom 1:1 in VR, same layout, same devices, same IoT backend, and partners could operate the real devices without being in the room.

Built during the pandemic, when the showroom and on-site partner work were out of reach. A collaboration with DFKI inside the BMBF-funded KosmoS programme: DFKI ran management and technical support, the DAI-Labor owned the showroom and the twin on top of it.

The central question in any VR product: how close should a virtual interaction stay to the real one it replaces, and how far should it adapt to the medium?

Two requirements pulled against each other. Operating a device should feel familiar to anyone who knows the physical showroom. But the user is not standing at the device; they hold two controllers in a virtual room, and a 1:1 copy of the physical button layout is ergonomically wrong in a headset.

Proximity-based menus resolve it: point the controller at a device and a contextual menu opens next to it, in the visual language of the real product but laid out for a controller, not a finger. Menus close cleanly so the room stays uncluttered.

Tested internally with team members and partners on one question: can a VR novice identify a device and operate it without instruction?

Almost every tester was in VR for the first time. Navigation had to stay legible enough that nobody got disoriented or motion sick, which ruled out most of the movement patterns a VR-native audience would have accepted. That constraint is also why the tool is still usable for partners years later.