How Spatial Analogue Rethought Collaboration

Calin Pacurariu knows that when it comes to large-scale creative projects, people do their best when they’re all on the same page—and in the same room.

“We’re naturally wired to interact with one another,” says Pacurariu, founder and CEO of the immersive design firm Spatial. Which is why, in 2024, the company launched Spatial Analogue, an Apple Vision Pro app that allows users to visualize, build, and share designs within a fully spatial 3D environment.

Whether you’re a car designer looking to swap in a new set of wheels, or an architect hoping to tweak your latest floor plans, the app allows you and your team to create and refine 3D prototypes in an immersive spatial environment, one that makes it feel as though your colleagues are right next to you.

“Apple Vision Pro makes it all feel visceral,” Pacurariu says. “With the automotive-related projects, for example, you feel like you’re in the vehicle, looking at the leather stitching interplay with the screen sight lines. There’s so much detail.”

Spatial was founded in 2017, just a few years before the pandemic upended the modern workplace by separating and scattering employees around the world.

“I think something fundamental got lost along the way when design teams became distributed,” says Pacurariu, who notes that isolation sometimes hampers innovation. “There are subtle cues that don’t come across in a video call. And in the design world, it’s hard to articulate concepts and ideas when you’re not standing around the same object.”

Analogue aims to ensure team members can collaborate and communicate. Once team members are connected in Analogue, they can shape a project from start to finish, whether they’re manipulating 3D assets, keeping tabs on progress via discussion feeds, or entering a shared design-review scene, where coworkers work side by side as they refine projects in real time.

And while the app has been embraced by longtime 3D designers, it’s intended for everyone on a team.

“We kept hearing from professionals that their biggest bottleneck wasn’t the design but was communicating that design. All the critical context—the true scale, the sight lines, the feel—gets lost when a client is just looking at a flat screenshot or a video feed,” says Thomas Hale, Spatial’s chief product officer.

Because major design projects succeed or fail based on feedback from dozens if not hundreds of contributors, Spatial needed to ensure Analogue would be accessible to all. That made it an ideal fit for Logitech Muse, a new stylus that lets users easily draw and interact with spatial objects, even if they don’t have lots of hands-on creative experience.

“Whenever people have to communicate an idea, they say the same thing: ‘Give me a piece of paper, and let me draw it,’” Hale says. “With Logitech Muse, we’re making 3D sketching just as intuitive. It gives everyone on the team the power to communicate complex ideas with perfect clarity, not just the 3D designers.”

The stylus also allows team members to control an object’s movement and annotate designs.

“When people see it being used for annotation, they really start lighting up,” Pacurariu says. “Let’s say you’re designing a chair. You put it into a scene and use Logitech Muse to annotate the design in layers. If someone wants to make the chair lean back a bit more, they can start drawing. And if you manipulate the model, everything you’ve annotated moves with it for full context.”

The work-in-progress design can then be refined further with Analogue Portal, a companion app that makes it possible for users to view and revise projects across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

“We know all team members won’t be on a Vision Pro,” Pacurariu says. “Analogue Portal gives them a 2D view into a 3D world, so they can make decisions and keep projects running smoothly.”

All of these updates are the result of hundreds of conversations Spatial has held with experts in the fields of interior design, architecture, and product design, among other areas.

“Not every company is going to have the same workflow,” Hale says. “So for us, the biggest question isn’t just ‘How do you make Vision Pro frictionless?’ It’s ‘How do you connect the power of Vision Pro to the entire team with zero friction?’ The real solution has to include everyone, whether they’re in the headset or on their iPhone.”

Pacurariu and Hale have both spent years in the spatial-technology field. Now, they’re watching coworkers come together with Apple Vision Pro—including their colleagues at Spatial, who use Analogue on their own projects.

“For decades, there has been the promise of a technology that could do all of this, but it’s the first time you’re really seeing it,” Pacurariu says. “We’ve done demos for hundreds of CEOs of major companies. And when they experience Analogue on Vision Pro, they say, ‘This changes everything!’ And that’s the reaction you want.”