Suzanne Borders: BadVR is mixing art and technology to innovate data visualization

Hello Suzanne, I’m very excited to be with you today. Thank you for being here. Present yourself to my readers! (0:00)

Yeah… well, thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate the opportunity. So, like you said, I’m the CEO and co-founder of BadVR. What does BadVR do? We take really large complex datasets and pour them into virtual and augmented reality to help people find insights faster and to present data in a more intuitive and easy-to-use format.

When have you entered VR and what has fascinated you about this technology? (0:54)

That’s a very good question and I have a very good answer. So, when I was a kid, I actually was born in California, but my father was going to medical school. When he graduated, I was moved to Kansas City, which is in the middle of the country, and no offense to anyone who’s listening from Kansas City… but it’s kind of a smaller town and it’s not as big as San Diego where I was living. I was kind of alienated culturally there… I got made fun of a lot, I didn’t fit in.

So, I obsessed with Star Trek and I would watch “Star Trek The Next Generation” over and over: they had a Holodeck in that show and I just thought to myself as a kid “I want one of those!”, because then I can step inside the holodeck and go back to California… I can leave Kansas City and go wherever in the world that I wanted to go, to escape all of the bullying and the people that would make fun of me. I had this fascination with the concept of a Holodeck and as I grew up that never sort of left me and when virtual reality became the thing with Oculus, I just saw this opportunity to actually build my own holodeck. I’ve always had this fascination with like virtual worlds and being able to go someplace besides the reality or go someplace beyond where you actually are, so that’s really what sort of picked my interest in it.

And when the Oculus CV1 came out, I was very interested in the technology… I had one of the first Hololenses in all of Los Angeles… but at that time, in my personal life, I wasn’t ready to start a business in there and I also felt that the market wasn’t quite ready so I didn’t really go for it… But I’ve always been interested in it, I’ve always had my eye on that. It’s something that has always been a life goal for me, so I’m very thankful that I’m now able to finally do that as an actual business and to be an actual CEO and have a product and all of that stuff.

That’s amazing! You are the boss now… so, you introduced BadVR. What do you do exactly there? What is your expertise? (3:00)

The approach that we take at BadVR is very different than a lot of people assume. You think data visualization, you think AR and VR, so you immediately assume that the product is basically multi-dimensional charts because that’s the way that we now present data, that’s the way you think of data.

But we are trying to completely redo that, so none of the products in BadVR have charts, we are against charts and graphs. I feel that they are a necessary compromise when you have a two dimensional screen because you only have so much space and you have to condense data down into a displayable format, but when you have virtual and augmented reality, you have a limitless amount of digital space in which to paint data and display data. You don’t need to have these condensed summary views of the data, you can actually see your real data set and that’s where our expertise comes in.

Literally, with our product you can step inside your actual data… not a chart of your data, not a summary on a dashboard: you actually stand into the real data set. What that means is that we have different data environments, environments that are driven by your data, that present your data in a way that’s easy for you to understand, that you can step inside and explore. Obviously, you still need standardized ways to display data in the way that you know: a pie chart is always gonna look like a pie chart, it’s a standard way to display certain types of data. We are doing that same thing, but the way that we do it is data environments, so we have four standardized data environments that depending upon the type of data, the schema, the structure, the attributes, we recommend one of these four environments to put your data into and paint it on top of the structure of that environment, if that makes sense.

So, that’s the approach that we take and that’s what we’re working on. Basically, building new standards for visualizing immersive data that are appropriate for that platform. We’re not trying to take two-dimensional graphs and shoehorn them into 3d or to virtual immersive reality because I feel like that’s really gimmicky and that’s not really an added value. We are doing that hard work: just fundamentally rethinking what data visualization would be in the future and then building these new standards and patenting them so that other people can’t steal them [laughs].

You’re talking about new ways of visualizing data… can you give us some examples? (5:50)

Yeah, for sure. I won’t go with the geospatial example, because that’s too obvious: if you have any sort of geospatial data, it’s easy that you put it on a map and see it better.

I’ll go with an example of more abstract data. One of the environments that we have is very good for visualizing machine learning models… and so one example is: we actually have a customer that has a machine learning model, that ported its data in there, and the reason that they did that is… actually it’s several reasons… one is that when people think of machine learning, they don’t really know what it is, they have a concept of what it is, but they can’t see it, it’s really difficult to see a machine learning model. This (our solution) gives people the opportunity to see it, to have a visual image to it, and it also gives them the opportunity to monitor and to view it in real time and see patterns in the output of the machine learning model… patterns that were not possible to see, if you were just looking at it on a two-dimensional screen.

The way that this works is that you sort of step inside what we call a “data Stadium”: the presentation of the data is the same as if you are in an actual sports arena and everything is presented in that manner: you have scoreboards on either side… you’re able to drill down to the individual seat or the section of the row… and stand upon that… and you’re also able to apply it real-time filtering using our custom controller (also patent-pending)… it’s the ability to view all of these individual data points, millions or billions of them, presented in a manner that makes sense to you, organized like a stadium is organized… and the ability to drill down to the individual data point within that and filter it using real-time filtering

What are your typical customers? (7:56)

The typical customers we are focused on right now are in several industries: telecom is one of them, and that’s really great for our network visualization that we call SeeSignal, which people have heard a lot about because we got a grant from Magic Leap for that. We’re also focused on e-commerce: we have really great solutions for that particular industry, as well; and financial visualizations… obviously, the finance industry really has a great love for data visualization; smart city applications, which is great for obviously geospatial data and visualizing that in the smart city application.

Those are the core industries that we’re focused on right now and we’re really going for large companies, specifically large legacy companies that may have a ton of data but that may not have that sort of technology legacy to be able to utilize it as well as they could. You know, it’s not a company like Google… obviously, there are tech companies that are really familiar with the individualization, the analytics… I’m sure they’d get value from our product as well… but the most immediate value is for these companies like Unilever, Coca-cola, that are older, more legacy: they have a ton of data but a lot of people there aren’t familiar on how to utilize them or they’re not super technical-savvy. That’s really where we’re focusing on: companies like that, within those industries.

But why VR? Why can’t I just watch 3D data on my PC? What is the added value of AR and VR in data visualization? (9:26)

There are a lot of different benefits. I think the first one is scale: when you have a two-dimensional screen, like the one I’m looking at now, you only have so many pixels and it’s limited to a point in space in front of you, so you by necessity have to abstract the view from the core data, you have to summarize it, and every time you do that, you’re only looking at it from one particular vantage point. Regardless of how you summarize, it’s only sort of one single view down into that dataset. But with virtual reality or augmented reality, you can see the entire thing, and the reason you can do that is the scale. It presents an opportunity to show you much more data in a single view and within a single environment.

Then you have this concept of immersion, which is that you can actually be inside the data and not just look at the data, but have it in front of you, behind you, above you, at the side of you, with all that sort of spatial awareness that the user has to represent and communicate of the data. All of this means that analyzing the data is much faster for humans, because you’re used to putting three-dimensional data and analyzing three-dimensional data. The process of working in three dimensional data is much easier for thinking, so it increases recall and lowers the cognitive load. Essentially you do analyze faster and come with better insights.

Then, of course, it’s great this is more engaging and it’s more intuitive… so, if you put on a headset you don’t need to learn Python, you don’t need to set up a complicated dashboard. It’s completely intuitive in the way that the data is presented to you. It is as data analysis becomes experiential, so you can actually perform bodily movements and enter into this new world and that is the process of analysis, instead of just looking at a screen and typing… that you know is really struggling.

I think that anytime you have data that’s presented three dimensionally, or multi-dimensionally, you’re gonna have a lot of different benefits… all of which, you know, I have just talked about.

There are other companies like Virtualitics that work with data visualization. What is the thing that makes you of BadVR special for what concerns data visualization? (12:00)

We take a completely different approach to our product and I think I started touching on this a little earlier in the conversation. Virtualitics is definitely a competitor of ours… and I can be a bit aggressive sometimes because I am very competitive… but their product is very academic: it’s by scientists for scientists. They have followed the traditional established route of visualizing data, using charts, using graphs, because when you have an academic background, you’re really embedded in the current way of thinking. You’re gonna do it the way that it’s always been done… the standards and whatever… and that’s what they excel at: they’re really really good at charts and graphs, so they make multi-dimensional charts and graphs.

However, at Bad VR we’re a team of obviously very smart engineers, but also artists. We’re going past what is existing today for data visualization and trying to come up with the data visualization platform of tomorrow, so we’re really fundamentally redoing it. None of our products have charts and graphs, we are moving past the standard that we have today for 2D and trying to reimagine what that new immersive standard will be for tomorrow.

We really excel in product strategy, we really excel at innovation, we really excel at a new way of thinking. And obviously, I believe we add more value to the end-user by building products for most of people, made by people who are really passionate about making products accessible to everybody.

So, Virtualitics is great in making products for academics and scientists; we’re making the data visualization products for everybody else. It’s a good way of thinking about it.

Great! And why the name BadVR? I have also read that sometimes it has been a problem with investors… (14:14)

“BadVR”… there are several different things… one of them, is that it’s an acronym: “Bring All your Data”, so that’s one of the stories of the BadVR name.

The other one is that it really captures our spirit as a team, of being rebellious, of being artistic and being free thinkers… we’re really badass you know! I have, yeah…

[She shows me tattoos on the neck and even on the hands!]

It’s a way of capturing our spirit as a team and our culture, and I think that it is also one of those names that sticks in your head: you hear “BadVR”, it doesn’t fit what you think it should be. It should be “good VR”, so you question “why is it bad VR”, you say “now I want to talk to these people”, “now I want to know the story”… so, it’s been a really great conversation starter. It’s got a lot of attention, it brings a lot of people to us, especially people who maybe wouldn’t have been interested in a really traditional name like “immersive technologies”.

We get a lot of free thinkers, we have a lot artists and because of that we’ve ended up with a lot of advocates and really high places within really large organizations. We had some customers… we’re talking about global brands, multinational corporations… and their CEO loves the name, he comes to our office, this tiny little office and a co-working space and sits down and try our product and buy it… and one of those things that draws them in is the name. Sometimes I get some critics for it from an investor… but I really do feel that the customers love it and it’s something that helps make us memorable. I’m a big fan… obviously… I came up with it!

It is also a five-letter URL (badvr.com) and that’s another positive side.

[Note: Shorter URLs are better for SEO, apart from being easier to write, that’s why it is positive]

[After that, I say that I like the name “BadVR” and I think that it fits Suzanne]

I see on Twitter that you use a lot your Magic Leap device, so why are you a so big advocate for Magic Leap? (17:04)

I actually I did mention this: I was one of the first people in Los Angeles to own the Hololens 1. I got that, and I remember taking it out of the box and I loved the form factor, I loved the little pods that came in, but I put it on and it had this really limited field of view and all of the gestures were like, you know, like the bloom thing, or this thing [she performs the air-tap gesture] and I got that “this is not working for me” from a usability standpoint. Microsoft has always been a company for which usability has been a challenge… UX is not what they’re really good at. I was like “okay” and so I ended up selling the Hololens: I liked it, but I was like “it’s not quite there yet”.

Then I remember Magic Leap One came out and I was also one of the first people to get a Magic Leap device but I was reading all this press like “oh it’s gonna suck”, “it’s not very good”, whatever… I took it out of the box and I put it on my head, and I saw this huge field of view and I could go up and just touch a hologram… I didn’t have to do that this thing or that thing [she makes some Hololens gestures with he hands]: I could just touch it and I was just like “this is amazing, this is what I was hoping for when I first tried the Hololens”.

And I also loved how the experiences that ship with the device are really artistic. They weren’t like “oh shoot something that comes through the wall”. I don’t have a problem with shooting… that’s just shooter games are so boring to me, there are so many of them. But this device, the Magic Leap, it came with like art, it came with Tonandi, it came up with these really cool abstract experiences… it really just captured my heart.

Once I had my device, people from the company reached out to me… like actual people who worked at the company were helping me figuring out how to use it, how to build for it, how to play with the device, how to make it work… and I just really felt connected to the people working on the Magic Leap. Culturally, from an artistic standpoint, I really felt like they had captured some of the artistic essence of immersive technology, as opposed to Microsoft, which I just thought like “oh it’s a shooter game”… and you know, Tony, I didn’t feel like they had the artists’ heart.

What I love the most, long story short in my long rambling answer, is that Magic Leap has an artistic side to it… the company, the product, the brand, that I really connect with. I love the people who make it and I really think it’s a great product, that’s why I’m always talking about it, I am always wearing it.

I hope that when the HoloLens 2 will come out, you will be the first in Los Angeles getting it (20:00)

Absolutely… right now our team is focused on getting a Quest, so they can do a teardown. I was actually up late last night looking on eBay for early releases because I heard that Walmart accidentally ships them out [notice: this interview was taken in May, so the Quest was not available yet. The teardown by BadVR has already been published] so I was like “let me see if somebody who received it has put it up for sale so I can buy it, so I’m gonna tear it down”… fingers crossed.

In particular for Hololens 2, if I will be one of the first ones to get it, I will definitely share my thoughts and opinions on it.

I know that you won of the dev grants offered by Magic Leap. What was the project about? (20:52)

I know that a lot of people applied with like the grander vision of their company… what we did was: we took one of our data environments… if you remember I described them before… so we took just one of those, which was “networking visualizing” of cell signal, Wi-Fi signal, all of that sort of stuff… and we said what we’d like to build this specifically for Magic Leap, and that’s what we received the grant for.

I think it also had to do with the fact that we built the first version of it at a hackathon back in November, at Magic Leap and AT&T hackathon, and we called it SeeSignal just because we needed a name for the environment, we needed a name for the project. It ended up getting a lot of attention on Twitter, and we had Rony [Abovitz] publicly commenting about it in some of his speeches or in some of his own public presentations… so I think that it had something to do with seeing the public’s reaction to that and seeing that a lot of people were interested in this.

So, basically we just applied for that specifically and what we’ve received the grant for. SeeSignal is a networking environment: you can put on a headset and see the visualization of your Wi-Fi signals, Bluetooth signals, and cellular phone (so coverage) signal and it will be coming out this summer on Magic Leap World. Anyone will be able to download it and visualize data from his/her phone or his/her. We’ll have an early version ready at Augmented World Expo at the end of this month [May] for people to try.

[I compliment her for this interesting project]