Problem Introduction
In modern day society, the need for online e-commerce has increased dramatically. Everyday, customers spend millions on technology, clothing and many other product categories and love to test products to find what meets their needs best. However, for some product categories like décor and furniture, it is difficult for shoppers to find products that fit in their space when only looking at images of the furniture so they usually order and return products if they do not meet their requirements. Furnish is a Mobile App Project, a Furniture Store with 3D Product Visualisation
Problem Statement
When I want to buy furniture, I want to be able to ensure the product fits in my room, so I can save time, money and reduce my impact on the environment from product returns.
Current Solutions
I conducted a gap analysis on current solutions to get an idea of the techniques employed by the industry leading platforms that use AR technology in their shopping apps.
Amazon AR View
The Amazon App includes an augmented reality feature utilising the capabilities of Apple's ARKit. Users open a product page on the Amazon app and select the AR View camera button. They can then choose from a variety of décor items ranging from home décor to electronics, and then overlay an image of the object over their current living area.
Advantages:
- Leverages their large range of product offerings to be more attractive to indecisive shoppers
- Increases sustainable shopping by providing true to life scale models of objects in a camera view
Disadvantages:
- Products have low graphical fidelity in terms of illumination and texture so the experience is functional but not as immersive as it can be; which is important for scenarios such as objects with shiny surfaces.
- The app does not react to contextual environments causing placed objects to clip through objects already in the scene.
IKEA Place
Ikea Studio is the latest entry into the AR interior design app market. It is a revamp of its Place app and works by recognising existing furniture in a room and placing white boxes where objects are currently located. It then allows users to create 3D room designs with measurements, including windows and doorways. Users can then add furniture, and other decorations before producing an export of the design.
Advantages:
- Highly interactive experience
- Export of interior design visualisation
- Access to wide range of IKEA products
Disadvantages:
- As with Amazon AR View, products have low graphical fidelity in terms of illumination and texture so the experience is not as immersive as it can be.
- Addresses the contextual environment issue of objects
Pain Points
- Design a shopping app with features that provide an environmentally friendly way to try and test different options for furniture products.
- Design a shopping app with features that provide a time and cost efficient way to order furniture products.
Defining Users
User Stories
User Flow
Design Solutions
Project Summary
The Virtual Décor app is a personal project that currently implements 3D computer graphics into a simple shopping app. The May Update contains a prototype shopping experience and the ability to add selected products to a 3D scene as object moulds with texture and surface information visualised. Achieving the user flow was a high priority goal for the May Update, so a revamp of the the Visualise section is currently underway, replacing the 3D computer graphics with an augmented reality experience, updating the UI and re-branding to “Furnish”.
Design System
I created a simplistic design system to guide my decisions for different aspects of the user interface. It reduced the time needed in tracking and modifying design choices in the prototypes and during development.
Early App Designs
Conclusion
A significant amount of insight was gained in understanding the design requirements of modern shopping apps and the need for immersion as the final tweak to perfect the future of product testing; Virtual product testing. As the project progresses, I will have more to reflect on and look forward to learning about the best ways to optimise the user experience.
For the Early Release in May, in terms of the UIUX aspects, I could have continually researched the app market as new apps released with extended features, conducted extensive user research. In terms of the software development aspects, I could have compared different development stacks eg: Ionic, Flutter, developed an AR object visualisation feature and used Jest testing for React Native.
Future Steps
UX Research
- Showcase of Ideation
- Showcase of Sketches
- Conduct Usability Tests
UX Design
- Final Designs coming soon
- Update the design system using examples like Atlassians
Project Management
- Agile Kanban board on Linear
Software Development
- Move the frontend to Typescript
- Switch the backend to Python or C#
- Implement AI features