Doing a Final Degree Project and eight years later becoming a company at the forefront of European digital transformation. This, which could be the fantasy of any student, is the reality of Álvaro Antoñanzas and Álvaro Monzón. Both studied together the degree of Audiovisual Communication at the University San Jorge of Zaragoza. And there, the seed of DeuSens was born. Shortly after, Alejandro Gracia joined the company and they created a project that became a reality as soon as they finished their studies, and that today is a growing company, internationally recognized.
“We saw this trend starting in Spain and we joined it. We created a technology company thinking that there was a market and time has proven us right,” says Álvaro Monzón, CEO of DeuSens. What these two entrepreneurs are capable of doing at DeuSens -together with their team- is difficult to define in words. They create ‘parallel worlds’ that you can access from your cell phone, tablet or with virtual reality glasses. That is, they allow users to immerse themselves in what we know as ‘metaverse’.
Travel without leaving the site
Among the key differentiating factors that Monzón highlights about DeuSens, compared to other companies in the sector, is that they take care and worry about the reason for their projects. “We take for granted that our developments have to be cool, but we are not only a creative team, we look for the usefulness of what we develop, it has to have a business benefit for our customers,” explains Monzón. One of the many jobs they do are ‘Online Events’, programmed to bring together clients, suppliers and prescribers in a virtual world where they can interact just like in a face-to-face event, with the only difference being that the person who appears on stage is a personalized avatar. You can walk through the aisles, visit booths and engage in conversations with other participants. “At Pandemic, this worked very well,” Monzón acknowledges. In his opinion, it is an option that multiplies access to events and saves users time and money.
Augmented Reality triumphs in the commercial sector
During its short life, DeuSens has gone through different phases. Although its evolution curve is clearly upward. In 2021 they obtained a growth of 80% and in 2022 100% compared to the previous year. At the moment, the company’s staff is made up of more than a dozen professionals -most of them from the quarry where they were trained- and they plan to add new incorporations. “The total revolution will be when Extended Reality becomes accessible to everyone, as happened with the smartphone”, predicts Monzón.
One of the sectors that most demand projects to DeuSens is the commercial, and specifically retail. For them it offers projects such as ‘Alice AR’, a tool that makes it possible to bring any product to life in real space. For example, simulate how a piece of furniture would look in a room, in different colors and sizes. It can also adjust the price depending on the selected features.
“It is a solution that facilitates sales to salespeople, allowing them to carry with them an interactive catalog with which they can show products in 3D, at any time and place, using only a cell phone with internet or a tablet,” says the head of the company. They have also designed ‘Alter Heaven’, with which they create metaverse by combining the development of 3D virtual environments with tokenization and blockchain technology.
The virtual testers that surprised Coca Cola
Can you imagine a virtual mirror where you can try on different hairstyles, makeup, accessories or clothes without leaving the site? DeuSens calls it ‘FunMirror’ and with it surprised at the Coca-Cola Music Experience 2022 music festival in Madrid. In that case, two ‘FunMirror’ were used, which served as virtual touch mirrors of the new collection of the Coca-Cola Fan Store. Users could check how they looked with the brand’s T-shirts, pants, sweatshirts, glasses or caps before buying any product. An alternative in the world of merchandising that, according to Monzón, “generates new stimuli among attendees”.
And that’s not all. DeuSens has also designed virtual assistants capable of holding conversations in real time, without the need for human personnel. The project is ‘Alice Assinstant’, and is designed to automate customer relations, offering new information or resolving doubts. “We are trying to achieve the WOW effect on the public while facilitating and improving the service of companies,” says Monzón, who thinks that the integration of this type of digital strategies in conventional spaces will be progressive but “will not take long”.
Monzón’s history in the virtual world
An example of this coupling between the classic and the technological is the historical recreation that this company from Zaragoza has made for the municipality of Monzón in Huesca. This town, with a little more than 17,000 inhabitants, has incorporated into its tourist offer the possibility for users to tour the military fortress of the area in the virtual world from anywhere in the world. This is a way of telling its history and encouraging visits to the area.
As explained on their website, DeuSens.com, to recreate every detail of the castle a team of professionals traveled to the village, where they conducted a 360º photo shoot of each of the corners. Then, they reproduced in 3D modeling each of the rooms and textured the modeling to achieve the most realistic result possible.
At this moment, visitors can discover the chapter house, the keep, the bedrooms, the stables, the exterior of the monument and the room where James I lived during his childhood. All this, decorated and set with medieval motifs to achieve an immersive and realistic experience.
