Virtual Reality

Augmented reality is also present in the corporate arena with IKEA, the swedish furniture giant  launched a new mobile catalogue which allows their customers to place IKEA furniture in the room through a camera. They can use it to judge the approximate scale of the furniture in relation to their homes and see how it looks in their rooms to find the optimum design and colour, all from the comfort of their own home.

 

IKEA launched a new mobile catalogue on 25 August 2013 incorporating augmented reality (AR). AR helps IKEA to “place” its products into customers' rooms to enable them to find their perfect fit.

 

With this mobile app, customers can use it to judge the approximate scale of the furniture from the comfort of their own home. The app uses the catalogue to judge the approximate scale of the furnishings – measuring the size of the catalogue itself (laid on the floor) in the camera and creating an augmented reality image of the furnishings so it appears correctly in the room. Hence, customers will be able to see what different Ikea sofas, chairs, beds, bookcases, chests of drawers and desks look like in their rooms virtually, simply by using their mobile phone camera.

 

Customers can put the physical Ikea Catalogue into their room in the space where they want to test a product. The Ikea Catalogue App picks up the catalogue and uses it to gauge the correct scale for products that will be shown on-screen. The product then appears on the customer’s mobile phone camera within the Ikea Catalogue App so it can be tested for colour and size. Customers can then test different products to find the right one for their home – finding the perfect fit.

This app can help to reduce the problems where customers bought the wrong sized furniture for their rooms. IKEA’s research shows that this problem affects 14% of its customers. 

 

The use of mobile technology to help test products shows that this augmented reality has a practical purpose and really helps customers to plan the layout of their houses.