The quintessential Swedish furniture giant has taken their customer experience to the next level with the power of Augmented Reality. Their latest app, Ikea Place, allows users to digitally place Ikea products anywhere in their home.
The IOS free application features realistically-rendered, true-to-scale 3D products. Not only that, according to them the app automatically scales products, based on room dimensions, with up to 98 percent accuracy. With major improvements to Apple's ARKit, the 3-D furniture in Ikea Place not only shows up at scale but also renders with true-to-life representations of the texture, fabric, lighting, and shadows!
This is definitely a game changer for the industry as now users can actually visualise how Ikea products will look in their home space. With over 2,000 IKEA products to choose from, all they need to do is point their IOS device to their desired space in a room and then drag and drop the selected product onto the space. To top it all off, IKEA's app allows users to save the products, share it on social media and also directly purchase the product through IKEA's website.
As our buying decisions are highly driven by convenience, it is a huge future sales driver for IKEA as users now feel like they already own these products. "Augmented reality and virtual reality will be a total game changer for retail in the same way as the internet. Only this time, much faster." Leader of digital transformation at Inter IKEA Systems Michael Valdsgaard said in a press release.
While placing a digital sofa in your living room is hardly as thrilling as playing an AR game that turns the whole room into a battlefield, Ikea Place represents one of augmented reality's most important use cases. It will certainly improve the furniture-buying experience, and relieve some of the stress of measuring what will or won’t fit in a tight space.
The dawn of AR-powered retail has begun. Imagine, augmented reality apps will be able create a virtual dressing room while you shop online or show you what a nice dress shirt would look like on your body or show how a pair of sunglasses would fit your face. That all starts now, and all you need is an iPhone. No assembly required.
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