Empathize

Research Plan

Seeing that I did not know much about the furniture industry, I knew that research was going to be even more important than usual. My experience in AR/VR was limited to video games so I had a lot to learn about AR as well. In order to direct my research I set out some research goals. These goals were 1) learn about important features in furniture sales, 2) understand more about Augmented Reality and its current uses, 3) to discover who the most prominent furniture shoppers are, and 4) to find out about the experiences of people who have used Augmented Reality. There were a few methods I felt would be effective for finding the information I needed. These were:

Secondary Research

1. Market Research

2. Competitor Analysis

Primary Research

1. 1-on-1 Interviews

Market Research

Since my knowledge of both AR and the furniture industry was so limited, it was important to start with some basic research to learn about them. I sat down at my computer and set out to find any pertinent information I could.

Furniture Industry

• Has a market value of $63 billion dollars, rising at a rate of 2.6%

• Market includes 37,950 businesses.

• Millennials make up 37% of all households purchasing furniture.

• 47% of Millennials buy furniture online.

  • Compared to 40% of Gen Xers and just 30% of Baby Boomers.

• Typically spend 2-3 weeks researching furniture before buying.

  • Compare prices and other information of 2-4 retailers before purchasing.

• 60% of Millennials use social media as a shopping tool when looking for furniture.

• 27% of users have not purchased an intended item if shipping costs were too high.

• 43% of users expect free shipping.

• 81% of furniture consumers have ranked quality (how long it lasts) as the top factor in furniture purchases.

• Prices, shipping information, materials, manufacturing details, colors, dimensions, and returns are important features to include on app.

• Sustainability has become an important factor in retail industries, including the furniture industry.

Augmented Reality

• Industrial use of AR is reported to be at 65% while AR use for entertainment is only at 35%

• About One Seventh of the worlds population are AR users.

• 32% of consumers use AR, 73% of mobile AR users report either high or very high satisfaction.

• 53% of consumers are interested in using AR in the next three months.

• 71% of shoppers prefer to go to stores that offer an AR experience.

• As of May 2019, the installed user base for AR-supporting mobile devices reached 1.5 billion.

• 48% of consumers said they would rather buy from a retailer that provided an AR experience.

• AR based training in industrial industries will be a $6 billion industry by 2022.

Where AR and the Furniture Industry Meet

• 72% of customers bought a product they didn’t expect to because of AR

• Increases Customer Retention on application

• AR benefits customers who can’t visit the showroom.

• Ikea place expected to raise online furniture sales from 1.6 billion to 5 billion in 4 years

Competitor Analysis

Having learned more about AR and the furniture sales, I wanted to take a look at their competitors. I wanted to learn about what some of their strengths and weaknesses were so I could design with them in mind. I started by focusing on direct competitors, which were companies operating in the same industy, to see some of the patterns they exhibited. I then looked at some companies that operated in related industries to see what I could learn from them.

Provisional Personas

Now that I was almost ready to start my interviews, I needed to take the time to figure out who I needed to interview. I created provisional personas to have a general guideline of who I wanted to interview before I set out to interview them.

1-on-1 Interviews

For the interviews I wanted to focus on users experiences shopping for furniture in the past. Additionally, sinceI had not hear much about AR from a user experience I wanted to hear some users talk about how they had interacted with AR. I interviewed a total of 5 users with some open ended questions. The interview transcripts can be viewed here.

Design

Low Fidelity

When it came to sitting down and sketching out my low fidelity wireframes, I tried to look at my research and combine it with some patterns I saw exhibited in competitor applications. The biggest challenge at the beginning was figuring out how to organize large quantities of information so they were accessible but did not take over the screen. Sketching these out helped me test out different layouts in a shorter timeframe than making mid fidelity wireframes would have taken.

Medium Fidelity Wireframes

The low fidelity wireframes were a good starting point but I wanted to create some mid fidelity wireframes that I could test before incorporating all of the visual elements. Some big changes were made to the home screen and the AR functionality was fleshed out more during this stage.

Prototype

Mid Fidelity Prototype

Going into the the prototype, I really wanted to make sure users would be able to use the AR section without confusion. The AR is one of the main focal points of the application so if users had trouble using it the app design was not accomplishing its goals. I also wanted to test if users understood how to filter their results because during interviews I discovered that most users have very specific criteria for the item they are shopping for.

Usability Test

When I was planning out the usability test there were two core things I wanted to test. I wanted to test if users understood the main functions of the AR mode and if they could define the criteria of the item they were looking for. The type of usability tests I chose to run were both in person and remotely moderated, thinking out loud usability tests. Using thinking out loud method I was able to hear some feedback that I may not have heard otherwise. Finding users with experience using furniture applications was a bit sparse because of quarantine but I was able to perform 5 usability tests overall. 3 of these tests were remote and 2 of these tests were in person. The findings from the test are here.

Affinity Mapping

My tests on the mid fidelity prototype were rather successful. I found that the most common error was something that would have worked in a fully functioning version but the prototype was designed to accomplish the task differently. Outside of that and some minor ambiguity all test subjects were able to overcome there was no other hefty source of friction.

Insights

1. Users were able to find the AR button but a lot of users weren’t sure of it when they saw it initially.

2. Most confusion from users during testing was a result of  the prototype being designed for a user to look for sofas through the search function.

Branding

To start off with branding I wanted to find a direction for each element before I sat down and began to choose what to incorporate. I was trying to find elements that fit well with the brand adjectives: Exciting, Abundant, modern, innovative, creative, Ambitious, and Impactful. To do this I started on Pinterest and created a mood board. After creating the mood board I found elements that fit with the elements I chose on Pinterest and created a brand style tile.

UI Kit

The last step of the process before updating my wireframes to a high fidelity version was creating a UI kit. I took all the UI elements utilized in my wireframes and put them into the UI kit. I later went back to the UI kit and updated them with any changes I made to the high fidelity wireframes.

High Fidelity Wireframes

As I was updating elements to high fidelity I tried to really focus on using color and size to define good typographical hierarchy. As I went through I altered a few elements like the product card and product page. Then I tried to use color affectively to highlight the important functionality of the application.

Final Prototype

Using the Hi Fidelity wireframes I updated created a higher fidelity version of the prototype to demonstrate what the final application would look like while completing these tasks.

Conclusion

I originally took on this assignment because I had no little to no knowledge of how AR was being utilized outside of gaming. That paired with my lack of initial knowledge about the furniture industry presented an interesting challenge coming into this project. I was able to develop my skills with something outside of my comfort zone which I hope is a skill I can continue to utilize.

Next Steps

• Update design based on any more feedback received

• Hand off to the development team