IKEA Augmented Reality
IKEA is a Swedish furniture company that started as a mail order catalogue business and has grown into the larger furniture company in the world, known for their step-by step picture assembly instructions. My team worked on this concept project to design an innovative way to improve the shopping experience for IKEA customers.
Role
Project Team Lead, Ideation, Design, and User Research
Tools
Figma, Axure RP, Miro, Trello, Slack, Google Suite
Project Details
Decorating a home is a very personal experience and shoppers face a lot of challenges when picking furniture out online. IKEA customers need assurance that a product is the right fit for their home when purchasing furniture online because satisfactory through online purchases can present difficulty.
Julius Daniels-Lee
Lead UI Designer
As the Lead UI Designer, I proactively participated as a team player. Honing my focus and investigating color theme, typography and UI Design components for SpontaneYes!. I Utilized an agile approach to the UX design development and this stakeholder's concept of a mobile application that leads to a deliverable mid-level prototype. There were no design guides to follow, we were the first team to begin brainstorming from concept to prototype.
2 Weeks | 80 hours
Discovery Phase
Surveys
When my team began our research we wanted a solid foundation for understanding IKEA shoppers, so I created a brief survey to be sent out that would give us insights into why people shop at IKEA and their furniture shopping habits. From a pool of 47 respondents I drew the following key conclusions:
Most people shop at IKEA because they have a wide variety of products & competitive prices, but they only shop about once a year or less. When they do shop, it’s usually for large furniture or accessory pieces.
Most shoppers have not purchased anything from their online store, helping to explain why the majority also said they have never had to return an item; likely because they got to see it in person before purchasing.
Most shoppers were concerned to some extent about if an item would fit in the intended spot of their home. Over half were concerned about if an item would look the same in-person as it does online.
User Interviews
We then interviewed twelve users, ranging from experienced furniture shoppers to novices. From these interviews we gained further insights into what people look for and are concerned about when furniture shopping, which we synthesized through affinity mapping:
"I am concerned about price, quality, size, and style when shopping for furniture."
"I measure the furniture and the space I want It in before purchasing something to make sure it fits."
"I have purchases furniture that either did not fit or match like I thought it would."
"I shop in-store for furniture."
Target Users (Persona)
Based on our affinity mapping conclusions, I created two user personas to help my team establish the problem that needed to be solved, focus and inform our design decisions, and further empathize with our users.
Meet Jamie & Avery.!
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The More Research The Better!
Competition:
We circled back to do some additional research on how we could solve the problems our users were facing in order to narrow the focus and create tangible solutions. Based on the companies our users mentioned in their interviews, we conducted a feature inventory. We found that IKEA was lacking an augmented reality feature.
Augmented reality (AR) is an enhanced version of the real physical world that is achieved through the use of digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli. Incorporating AR functionality into the IKEA mobile app could enable users to better visualize what a piece of furniture would look like in the space they want it in, which could help to alleviate their concerns about an item not fitting or not matching their current style before purchasing online.
Task Aanalysis
With a solution in mind, we dove into fully understanding the best practices for using augmented reality by comparing the steps and process to other competitors, so as to make IKEA's feature the best experience possible for our users.
Key Takeaways:
- Overall, Amazon has the most user friendly and practical system to use.
- Houzz was difficult to use and not very realistic, but the ability to view multiple items at the same time was innovative and useful.
User Interviews Round 2
Knowing that we would be designing an augmented reality feature, my team wanted a better understanding of user opinions on AR. From these interviews and another affinity mapping session we found:
I have never used augmented reality before, but it sounds beneficial for furniture shopping.
I think AR could help with judging size, space, and help with style choices.
I think large or unusually shaped items could benefit the most from using AR.
I am worried that AR wouldn't be accurate, and I would be back to square one
I am worried about how easy augmented reality would be for users to navigate.
Design Phase
User Flows
Transitioning from the first diamond into the Design stage, I created user flows to outline the process in which a user would find and utilize the AR feature within the IKEA app, as well as save an item and view it with other products.
Brainstorming & Wireframing
Together, my team conducted a design studio in order to collaborate on ideas implementing augmented reality into IKEA's existing mobile app through sketches During this stage we creatively aligned with IKEA's established minimalist aesthetic, we seamlessly integrated our new feature without causing the existing pages to seem cluttered or busy
Taking these individual ideas we converged, and began developing lo-fidelity wireframes. View More
Usability Testing
Using our low-fidelity wireframes, my team conducted our first round of usability tests in order to discover any immediate problems needing fixed. We provided five users with different tasks to determine how effective our early design was. Overall, the results were very promising and we had key insights based on the following metrics I created for us to test based on the time and number of clicks a user took. text and edit me. It's easy.
Overall, the results were promising
Most users completed the tasks given in our goal amount of time and clicks, showing that our feature was user friendly and efficient
But there were some failed attempts
User 2 stopped proceeding through the AR task on the screen that said "done," which was intended to inform users that the scan of their room was complete. They assumed this screen meant that the process had been completed
Iterations to our desi
With our design studio, we all created our own sketches but Shandreanna’s were an overall favorite. We did, however, include the maps from Chelsea’s sketches, the profile questionnaire screen’s from Ashley’s and the event and hobby category screens from Julius’ sketches.
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Usability Testing
We conducted both moderated Usability tests and unmoderated tests. The key takeaways from both were that our users overall enjoyed the app, however, they felt uncomfortable using linked in to log in, either because they were unfamiliar with it or they did not like the idea that their professional and personal lives could intersect. There was also some confusion with the map, as it was relatively small and we did not include a “you are here” icon to make it clear that it was interactive The toggle to turn on location services was also not originally labeled so users were not sure what it was for. We originally started the profile building section of the app with short answer questions and most of our testers preferred to do multiple choice first.
Viusal Design
My team then established the branding of IKEA's mobile app. We had to design new features such as the AR logo and process in a way that seemed effortless. We settled on a simple, widely known logo for AR in order to promote learnability and maintain the clean aesthetic. Additionally, we chose IKEA's signature yellow as our accent color so that it would better stand out on most screens, allowing for better accessibility.
Delivery Day
Once iterations on the low-fidelity wireframes were complete, my team and I created our mid-fidelity wireframes and ran a second round of tests with serveral different users. Overall, the results were great! Our users navigated the process efficiently and with minimal issues. The metrics I created for the second round of tests were all achieved for both the number of clicks and the time it took to achieve a task.
Check out our app!
Time for Reflection
As my first team project in UX, I found that I loved working with others on solving complex issues because we got to bring together different ideas and perspectives. I loved having the opportunity to manage a project and oversee our schedule while also being able to tell the story of our users and find a solution to the problems they have been facing. Being able to take part in the ideation and design portion of the project was so exciting, and I find myself even more energized by the creative process UX allows for. I am really proud of the final design my team made which was grounded in extremely thorough research to ensure this could help users as best as possible.