My name is Garry Normoyle, I am a furniture designer from Ireland. I have worked in Ireland, UK, USA before moving to Finland. I have always had a dream of owning my own business so, in 2018, I founded Dare to Design, a bespoke joinery company that would focus on the uniqueness of the client and design and build them stunning pieces of unique furniture…....or so I thought. While I did build some stunning pieces, I quickly found that I was putting in so much time explaining, visualizing, and documenting these unique designs. I realized that my process was flawed and that I had to change something.

The change that happened was Darades, an extended reality (XR) showroom I created to enable artisans and designers to streamline tasks like product development, customer management and design input, and international marketing and promotion, so they can spend more time on their craft.

I first heard about Convergent Reality (CR) in early 2023 after bumping into Dominique Moralez at several events and talking about design, although I didn’t have the term for it at the time looking back, I had been developing an aspect of Convergent Reality in Darades. The more Dominique and I spoke, the more he and I realized the huge crossover in the work that Convergent Reality and Darades were doing in this specific aspect of Convergent Reality.

Artisans, designers, and craftspeople are struggling to make a living from their craft. We are told to be unique, but the very people who design and make the most unique items on the planet can’t compete the big stores and the marketing budgets they have that enable them to make people think they are where we should go to be unique - when in fact, no matter how it looks, it is mass-produced and often at low quality. I know this because I am an artisan maker.

Convergent Reality and Darades is creating an artisanal extended reality (XR) platform where designers and artisans can have a dedicated showroom that will allow them to display and sell their designs to a global audience. This XR showroom will allow customers view, and even manipulate objects, to change size, material, colour, and parts of these designs to ensure they get a product that is truly unique to them.

In Darades, artisans can bring together designs and concepts in a virtual space that enables them to not only showcase them in a range of real-life, or even fantasy, environments, but also quickly share designs, and enable customers to offer feedback and requests - it acts like a collaborative productivity platform for artisans. It will allow artisans to concentrate more of their time on their craft to create the unique and wonderful product, and by utilising the most up-to-date manufacturing techniques we can create a more eco friendly product lifecycle, a more conscious consumer base and products that are generational.

To me, implementing Convergent Reality principles has enabled me to think more broadly about how artisans and craftspeople can maintain the time-honed skills and traditions of things like furniture-making, yet evolve their skills – and ideally future proof them – to meet the opportunities for creativity and collaboration offered by new and emerging technologies.

Convergent Reality helps me think beyond current constraints to imagine new possibilities. It helps me consider collaborations or solutions that are outside of the traditional boundaries of my craft, so that I can remain a steward of its skills and artisanry, while ensuring it remains vital and relevant into the future.

Author: Garry Normoyle, Convergent Reality (CR) Advisor Group
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garry-normoyle/

Published by Convergent Reality (CR) on 26 May 2023