Capability 02 · Design
D&C Studios designs and builds augmented and virtual reality in Mumbai for training, commerce and spaces, together with Virtuali, our immersive practice. Every project starts with one question: what can a person do in 3D that they cannot do on a page?
12
interactive AR and VR modules for Mahindra MILU
30%
faster practical onboarding in the MILU pilot
60+
Made By Bharat products with AR previews
Where it usually starts
The good briefs start with a task that a screen does badly. The risky ones start with a headset.
Industrial and technical skills are physical. Videos show the sequence, but a learner still meets the real machine cold, and mistakes on the floor are expensive.
Furniture, lamps, jewellery and machinery are hard to judge from a photograph. The doubt shows up as abandoned carts, long sales calls and returns.
Someone saw a demo and wants one. Without a specific task to improve, the result is a novelty that gets a launch post and no second visit.
A beautiful model that takes forty seconds to load on a mid range Android handset helps nobody. Most AR fails on file size, not imagination.
What we do
Six kinds of immersive work, each chosen for the job in front of it rather than the novelty.
Place a product in the room straight from the browser, with nothing to download. Built into Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom store.
Face and hand tracking for glasses, jewellery, watches and cosmetics, with honest advice where try on would mislead, as it often does with clothing fit.
Web ready models made from CAD files, photographs or a sample on our studio table, and configurators that let customers change colour, finish and parts in real time.
Rehearse a procedure safely before touching the real equipment, with assessment built in so trainers can see who is ready and who needs another attempt.
Step by step overlays on a tablet or phone, beside or on the real machine, for assembly, maintenance and inspection.
A short, inexpensive test before a big commitment: a working prototype on the target device, tried by real users, with a plain view on cost and whether to go further.
The Ampersand Method, applied
Immersive work follows the same six phases as everything we make, with extra care in the places where 3D tends to go wrong.
How the method worksWe watch the task being done, on the floor or in the shop, and agree what better looks like as a number: faster onboarding, fewer returns, shorter sales calls.
Devices, environments, lighting and connectivity are audited early, along with the CAD files or products we will model. Hardware costs go into the plan from day one.
Storyboards and greybox prototypes on the target device within days, so the interaction is tested before a single polished model is made.
Models, interactions and scoring built in weekly increments, then tested on the cheapest phone or headset your users will actually hold.
A pilot with real learners or customers, measured against the agreed number, and training for the team who will run it.
New modules and models added on a roadmap, with analytics showing where people hesitate, repeat or give up.
Proof
Two projects where AR and VR earned their place by helping someone practise or decide, not by being new.
All workThe AR modules gave trainees a safe first attempt at a machine they would otherwise only read about. That changed how quickly people felt ready on the floor.
Tools we trust
How we engage
Most immersive work begins with a two to four week prototype on the device your users will hold, tested with real people. If it moves the number we agreed, we build the full set of modules or models and look after them as devices and platforms change.
Immersive technology is useful when it gives someone access to something a page or a video cannot. That single test has saved our clients more money than any choice of engine. It is also why our first conversation about AR often ends with a smaller, sharper idea than the one that started it.
Virtual reality replaces the room. It is right when a person needs to rehearse something that is dangerous, expensive or rare in real life: a machine start-up sequence, an emergency procedure, a walk through a plant that has not been built yet. Augmented reality adds to the room. It suits decisions made in a real space, such as whether a lamp suits the desk, and guided practice beside real equipment. Interactive 3D on an ordinary screen is often the quiet winner. It costs less to make, works on every device and is good enough for understanding parts and sequence.
Mahindra Industrial Learning for You needed industrial skills taught through a digital platform without reducing practical learning to a playlist of videos. We worked on the platform and the modules together. Where a learner needed to understand a machine before touching one, we built AR and VR practice, and we kept conventional screens everywhere else. Twelve modules later, practical onboarding in the MILU pilot was 30% faster across three training centres. The technology served the training rather than becoming the reason for the project.
For Made By Bharat, a marketplace for products made in India, AR previews went onto more than 60 products where scale and finish mattered most. We designed them as part of the decision, next to the photographs and the size guide, never as a novelty on the home page. If you sell online, our ecommerce team can build the store around them, with 3D media that loads as fast as the photos.
Immersive projects draw on Virtuali, the augmented and virtual reality practice in the Desicode family. It brings three immersive and 3D specialists who work inside the same team as our product designers and engineers, not in a separate vendor’s office. You get one accountable relationship, one plan and one set of weekly demos, whether the brief is a single product viewer or a year of training modules.
Most AR fails on file size, not imagination. We give every model a size budget, test on mid range Android phones and older iPhones, and build fallbacks so nobody ever stares at a blank screen. Headset work is tested on the devices your trainers can actually buy, charge and clean between sessions.
There is a small origin story here. In March 2019, as students, we ran the Atharva Hackathon in Mumbai, a 24 hour build with three themes. One of them was the future of augmented reality. We have been working on that brief, one way or another, ever since.
If you have a task that a screen does badly, start a conversation and a partner will reply within one working day.
FAQ
Augmented reality places a 3D product into the live camera view, so a shopper sees the sofa in their living room or the lamp on their desk at true scale. Common uses are furniture and decor previews, eyewear and jewellery try on, and configurable products such as kitchens or machinery. On Made By Bharat, more than 60 products carried AR previews.
The camera tracks your face, hands or body, and a 3D model is fixed to those points as you move, with lighting matched to the room. Glasses, earrings, watches and make-up work well because they sit on stable features. Clothing is harder: fabric and fit are still approximated, so we often recommend 3D views and size guidance over a try on that misleads.
WebAR runs in the phone's browser, so there is nothing to install. On an iPhone a product opens in AR Quick Look, on Android in Scene Viewer, and face based try on runs through the camera inside the web page. For most stores WebAR is the right place to start. A native app earns its place when AR is used daily or must work offline.
It can, for products where size, finish or fit drive the decision. Platform vendors publish striking uplift figures; read them as vendor data, often drawn from their best customers. Our advice is to test it: add AR to a set of products, compare conversion and returns against similar products without it for a quarter, and expand only if the numbers move.
We build models from CAD files where they exist, otherwise from photographs, measurements or a sample sent to the studio, then optimise them to load quickly on a phone. A simple, single material product usually costs ₹5,000 to ₹15,000 per model; complex products with many parts or finishes run ₹20,000 to ₹60,000. Variants of an existing model cost far less.
Yes. Shopify supports 3D models natively as product media, and a configurator can be added as a theme app block that maps each choice to a store variant, so price and stock stay correct. WooCommerce needs a plugin or a custom block to do the same. If you are still choosing a platform, read our Shopify and WooCommerce comparison.
Each does a different job. VR suits rehearsing a full procedure safely, away from the floor. AR suits guided practice beside the real machine, usually on a tablet. Interactive 3D on an ordinary screen suits learning parts and sequence cheaply and at scale. For Mahindra MILU we combined AR and VR across 12 modules, and practical onboarding was 30% faster in the pilot.
A WebAR preview for an existing store, with a first set of models, usually starts from about ₹3 lakh. A branded AR app or a small set of VR training modules typically runs ₹12 lakh to ₹35 lakh, depending on devices, interactions and content. We usually suggest a two to four week prototype first, so the larger sum is spent only once the idea has proved itself.
Tell us who needs to learn, buy or decide, and on which device. A partner replies within one working day, and the honest answer may be that you do not need AR at all.
