Based on the briefing, we developed concepts for three different design directions. From the very first presentation, it quickly became clear that an organic concept inspired by jellyfish and deep-sea animals was the most interesting option and also fitted in well visually with the brand image. A translucent surface like that of jellyfish also made it possible to visualise the intelligence inherent in the AI assistant very vividly.

The translucent surface with its frosted glass look posed a particular challenge for real-time rendering. By using our own render pipeline with special shaders, we were able to achieve a visually appealing and high-performance result.

A key requirement was to animate the internal states of the assistant. States such as waiting for an input, the processing of a prompt or the output of a response were to transition seamlessly and at any point. A break in the animation transitions should be avoided at all costs, as this would immediately ruin the illusion of a living organism. To make this possible, all animation parameters are fed into a simple physical simulation - each parameter is treated as a particle with mass, velocity and acceleration. In this way, the parameters follow a natural behaviour when they have to change suddenly.

The interactive icon is only a small element in the extensive WeMod application. This made it all the more important for us to enable WeMod developers to integrate the icon as easily as possible. Through regular coordination and detailed developer documentation of our icon component, a smooth integration into the overall system was achieved.