Overview
Matterport recently introduced a plugin SDK that opens up the doors for engineers to develop their own plugins for 3D Showcases. As proof of concepts, we developed three core plugins—Minimap, Compass, and Business Card—using the SDK. This project aimed to identify and design core plugin components used for essential features, such as plugin display options, plugin position settings, input boxes, and numeric sliders. External plugin developers will be able to use the components that we created. The project is currently in the private beta stage, and I led the early-stage design concepts that were eventually adopted in the Beta.
Goals
The goal of this project was to identify and provide essential web components for plugin developers. For our initial release, we decided to deliver the following:
- Input box, file uploader, numeric slider, toggle switch
- Plugin position setting component
- Plugin display settings component
- North/camera orientation settings component
We planned to release these components for the internal beta and expand the types of components based on user feedback.
Challenges
As the plugin SDK was a fairly young product initiated a year ago, there were quite a few technical limitations. The communication between the control panel and plugins was one-way; the control panel could give orders to plugins but not receive from them. Therefore, the design capability had to be limited.
Another issue was that when multiple plugins were enabled, it was difficult to align and position all plugins in the viewport. It was required to create a certain strategy to cleanly organize multiple plugins.
Outcome and Future Roadmap
We delivered all the MVP requirements under the limited conditions. The internal feedback was very good despite several UX issues. Currently, we are refining the visual design based on the private beta feedback and planning to move forward for the public beta.
