Interest in digital twins has picked up over the last year. Digital twin tools are growing in capability, performance and ease of use. They are also taking advantage of promising formats like USD and glTF to connect the dots among different tools and processes.

Advances in techniques for combining models can also improve the accuracy and performance of hybrid digital twins. Generative AI techniques used for text and images may also help create 3D shapes and even digital twins. These kinds of advances will allow enterprises to mix and match modeling capabilities in new ways and for new tasks. 

Here are 10 trends to watch for in the year ahead. 

1. From connecting files to connecting data

Over the last several years, all the major tools for designing products and infrastructure have been moving to the cloud — but still using legacy file formats to exchange data. Increasingly vendors are calling out the data integration aspects of these tools that make it easier to share digital twins across different tools and services.

This capability often starts as a subset of a vendor’s tools. For example, Siemens is rebranding a new subset of its tools as part of Siemens Xcelerator, while Bentley has launched Phase 2 of the infrastructure metaverse. In November, location intelligence leader Trimble launched Trimble One, a “purpose-built connected construction management offering that includes rich field data, estimating, detailing, project management, finance and human capital management solutions.” 

It’s one thing to move apps to the cloud simply. These innovators are doing something else: pioneering more efficient ways to connect data across these apps. Over the next year, the other major construction and design tools providers will likely announce similar advances for connecting digital twins and digital threads across different processes. 

2. Entertainment firms target the industrial metaverse

Epic and Unreal have made significant progress partnering with digital-twin leaders to provide a better user experience across devices. These companies have announced significant partnerships with GIS, construction and automobile leaders. 

Blackshark AI developed the globe behind Microsoft’s latest flight simulator, and went on to scale the tech for automatically transforming raw satellite imagery into labeled digital twins. In April, Maxar, a leading satellite imaging provider, announced a significant investment in Blackshark for Earth-scale digital twins. 

Over the next year, more gaming and entertainment companies will find opportunities in the industrial metaverse, which ABI expects to eclipse the consumer metaverse over the next several years.  

3. Nvidia galvanizes support for USD

Pixar pioneered the Universal Scene Description (USD) format to improve movie production workflows. Nvidia has championed USD to connect the dots across various digital twins and industrial metaverse use cases. The company has built connectors to the IFC standard for buildings, and is improving workflows for Siemens in industrial automation and Bentley in construction.

USD still lacks support for physics, materials and rigging, but despite its limitations, there is nothing better for organizing the 3D information for giant digital twins. Nvidia’s pioneering work on USD promises to integrate raw data with various industry, medicine and enterprise workflows. 

4. glTF simplifies digital-twin exchange

There is growing momentum behind the glTF file format for exchanging 3D models across different tools. The Khronos Group calls it the JPEG for the metaverse and digital twins. Expect gITF to pick up steam, particularly as creators look for an easy way of sharing interactive 3D models across tools. 

5. Generative AI meets digital twins

Over the last year, the world has been wowed by how easy it is to use ChatGPT to write text and Stable Diffusion to create images. Meanwhile, others have demonstrated new multimodal tools like DeepMind’s Gato for harmonizing models across text, video, 3D and robotic instructions. Over the next year, we can expect more progress in connecting generative AI techniques with digital twin models for describing not only the shape of things but how they work.

Yashar Behzadi, CEO and founder of Synthesis AI, a synthetic data tools provider, said, “This emerging capability will change the way games are built, visual effects are produced and immersive 3D environments are developed. For commercial usage, democratizing this technology will create opportunities for digital twins and simulations to train complex computer vision systems, such as those found in autonomous vehicles.”

6. Hybrid digital twins 

There are a variety of performance, accuracy and use case tradeoffs among the models used in digital twins. Prith Banerjee, CTO of Ansys, believes that in 2023 enterprises will find new ways to combine different approaches to hybrid digital twins.

Hybrid digital twins make it easier for CIOs to understand the future of a given asset or system. They will enable companies to merge asset data collected by IoT sensors with physics data to optimize system design, predictive maintenance and industrial asset management. Banerjee foresees more and more industries adopting this approach with disruptive business results in the coming years. 

For example, a healthcare company can develop an electrophysiology simulation of a heartbeat as the muscles contract, the valves open and the blood flows between the heart’s chambers. The company can then take a patient’s MRI scan and develop a simulation of that specific individual’s heart and how it would react to the insertion of a particular pacemaker model. If this R&D work is successful, it could help medical device and equipment companies invent new products and apply for FDA trials by demonstrating in-silico trials. 

7. FDA modernization act replaces animals with silicon

Animal testing has been a requirement for all new drugs and treatments since the FDA’s early days. This year, the U.S. Congress passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, allowing pharmaceutical companies to replace animal testing with in-vitro and in-silico methods. This will drive innovation and commercialization of patients-on-a-chip and better medical digital twins for testing more cost-effectively and humanely. 

Tamara Drake, director of research and regulatory policy at the Center for Responsible Science, told VentureBeat, “We believe in-silico methods, including use of artificial intelligence in conjunction with advance organs on a chip, or patient-on-a-chip, will be the biggest trend in drug development in coming years.”  

8. Digital twin ecosystems open new use cases

Matt Barrington, emerging technology leader at EY Americas, predicts that digital twins will increasingly transform how we run companies in 2023. For example, using a digital market twin to evaluate new products will support management and strategic decision-making. Digital twins will also underpin supply chain resilience in uncertain times, and improve risk management, safety and sustainability.

This transformation will require increased emphasis on foundational digital capabilities in data management and devops for data engineering, as well as a more comprehensive approach to security. Barrington predicts fragmentation and a high degree of specialization in the market, such that no single vendor has an end-to-end digital twin solution. Companies will have to integrate several capabilities to create the right fit-for-purpose solution for their business. Part of that approach will require more composable, open architectures and the ability to curate an ecosystem-based system. 

9. Enterprise digital twins take off

Vendors have made significant advances in tools for process mining and process capture to create a digital twin of the organization. 

Bernd Gross, CTO at Software AG, said these advances allow enterprises to create simulations for an entire department or a cluster of business processes rather than a single business process. 

Leaders will find ways to incorporate various technologies, such as process mining, risk analysis and compliance monitoring, to drive more accurate outcomes. These techniques require greater breadth and depth of data. Today, enterprises must include relevant KPIs, causalities between processes, the life cycle of a business unit and more to create a genuinely accurate enterprise digital twin. 

10. Digital twins drive 5G

5G delivers significantly faster speeds in direct view of one of the newer towers, but can be slower than 4G in the radio shadow zone. Cellular service providers are engaged in a race to fill in these shadows, and digital twins could help. Fortune Business Insights estimates that the market for 5G cells could grow by 54.4% annually through 2028.

Mike Flaxman, spatial data science lead at Heavy AI, said many telcos are looking at digital twins to shift to a plan, build, and operate model that allows them to maximize service while cutting costs.

Expanding the Reach of Design Tokens: How to Use Them in Non-UI Design

Design Tokens: The Secret to Consistency Beyond the User Interface

An organization can use design tokens to ensure consistency and coherence across all of its design decisions, not just those related to the user interface (UI). As we’ll see in this post, design tokens can be used to make a wide variety of design elements, including PowerPoint presentations, flyers, ads, and even a company’s printer and other printed materials, more consistent and high quality. But let’s discuss some basics for the people who are new to the concept of design tokens.

What are design tokens?

A design token is a variable that represents a core design element in a system, such as color, typography, spacing, and other interactive and visual properties. Designers and developers can easily access and use these elements as tokens throughout the design process, ensuring that each design decision is consistent with the overall design scheme.

Why use design tokens?

• Using design tokens has several benefits. First and foremost, it ensures consistency in the design of a product or brand. All elements of the product or brand can have a cohesive and harmonious look and feel by using the same set of design tokens throughout the design process.
• As well as improving consistency, design tokens can increase the efficiency of the design process. Defining design elements as tokens allows designers to easily access and use them, eliminating the need to create common elements from scratch. For larger design projects, this can save a great deal of time and effort.
• Finally, design tokens can enhance the maintainability of a design system. By using tokens to represent core design elements, designers can easily update the system to reflect changes in branding or design direction. To stay on top of changing trends or market needs, this can be particularly useful for companies.

Tokens beyond UI design

Design tokens are frequently used in UI design, but they can also be used in PowerPoint presentations, flyers, ads, PDFs, and even physical materials like company printers.

In a PowerPoint presentation, for example, design tokens can be used to define colors, typography, and other visual elements. Regardless of who is creating the company’s presentations, the company can maintain a consistent and professional appearance. A design token can be used to create a cohesive and unified brand image on flyers, ads, and other promotional materials.

Even physical materials like company printers, business cards, and other branded items can be designed consistently with design tokens. By defining the colors, typography, and other design elements as tokens, a company can ensure that all of its physical materials have a consistent and professional appearance, regardless of where or when they are produced.

For a company to use design tokens in their PowerPoint presentations, here are some steps that they can follow:

1. You must define your design tokens in advance. To start with, you need to define the core design elements that you wish to include as tokens. For example, you might want to include colors, typography, spacing, and other visual elements as tokens.
2. Once you’ve defined your design tokens, you need to create a library to store them. This can be a simple spreadsheet or a more complex tool like a design system platform like Figma. But I’d recommend making your design tokens available on a platform that is more accessible to non-designers as well.
3. Make sure that you utilize design tokens in your PowerPoint templates when you create PowerPoint templates for your company to ensure consistency and coherence. For example, if you have defined a particular color as a design token, then be sure that that color is used throughout the template consistently.
4. The design token library should be updated as needed as you work on PowerPoint templates. If you change the direction of the design while working on PowerPoint templates, you may have to update the design token library. To ensure that all design decisions are consistent with the overall design system, it is imperative to keep the library up to date as much as possible.
5. Whenever employees are creating presentations, encourage them to use the company’s PowerPoint templates to ensure that all presentations have a consistent look. As a result, all presentations will follow the design system defined by the design tokens, to ensure consistency.

The above steps will assist a company in using design tokens to define the colors, typography, and other visual elements of their PowerPoint presentations, helping to create a cohesive and unified brand image for the company.

Other creative ways to use tokens

1. Design templates: It is possible to create templates for different types of design work, such as social media posts, email newsletters, and presentation slides, with the help of design tokens, which can help you ensure that all your templates are consistent and professional.
2. Design marketing materials: Design tokens can also be used to design marketing materials such as flyers, brochures, and ads. This is because they can help create a cohesive and unified brand image across all of your marketing efforts and help to build brand recognition.
3. Design physical materials: It is also possible to use design tokens to develop physical materials, such as business cards, packaging, branded merchandise, and stationery, so that their appearance is consistent and professional. By using design tokens, you will ensure that all your physical materials are well-designed and look consistent.

Tokens are a powerful tool for ensuring consistency and coherence in user interface design. As long as designers define the core design elements as tokens, and use them consistently during the entire design process, they can create a UI that reflects the unique identity of their brand cohesively and harmoniously. The process of integrating design tokens into user interfaces involves a bit of planning and organization on the part of product designers, but the benefits of improving consistency, efficiency, and maintainability outweigh the effort.

That’s the end of this short yet hopefully insightful read. Thanks for making it to the end. I hope you gained something from it.

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