Immersive Furniture Experience

Bridging the Gap Between Physical and Digital Shopping

Imagine walking into a vast furniture showroom, overwhelmed by the sheer number of options. You love a particular sofa, but you're unsure if it will fit in your living room or match your decor. What if there was a way to see how it would look in your space before making the purchase?

This was the core challenge faced by FurnishSpace, a Sweden-based multinational home furnishings retailer. While the brand was globally recognized, it struggled with an increasingly digital consumer base that demanded convenience, personalization, and confidence in their purchasing decisions. Customers wanted to visualize products in their homes before committing to a purchase, but the traditional shopping experience couldn’t fulfill this need.

Recognizing this, I led the research, strategy, and development of an innovative Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) mobile application that would completely redefine how customers interacted with furniture. The goal was to create an immersive, seamless, and intuitive shopping experience that allowed users to place furniture in their homes virtually while maintaining high design standards and scalability.

A Seamless Blend of Physical and Digital

To bring this vision to life, I took a human-centered approach, starting with extensive user research to understand customer pain points. Why did customers hesitate to buy furniture online? What stopped them from making quick decisions? How could technology simplify the experience without feeling intrusive?

From research insights, I designed a roadmap for an AR/VR-enabled app that would enable customers to:

• Explore furniture collections digitally with 360° views
• Place virtual models of furniture in their space using AR
• Experience fully immersive showroom environments using VR
• Make data-driven purchasing decisions based on accurate visualizations

Crafting a Scalable and Intuitive Product

Developing an app with cutting-edge AR/VR features came with its fair share of complexities. To ensure a smooth and efficient development process, I structured my approach into three key phases:

Research & Strategy

• Conducted in-depth user interviews and surveys to identify core pain points in furniture shopping.
• Analyzed competitor apps and identified gaps in AR/VR experiences.
• Worked closely with engineers and data scientists to evaluate technical feasibility of AR/VR implementations.
• Created low-fidelity wireframes to map out user journeys and interactions.

Design System & Development

• Designed a scalable and reusable design system for AR/VR elements to ensure developer and designer efficiency.
• Built a Figma file structure that could handle complex, heavy design loads for various furniture models.
• Used StoryBook for rapid component testing and iteration, reducing development time significantly.
• Developed a seamless UI/UX flow, ensuring that even non-tech-savvy users could navigate the app effortlessly.

Testing & Iteration

• Conducted A/B testing with real customers to fine-tune the AR accuracy and UI design.
• Implemented eye-tracking analysis to optimize VR interactions and improve user engagement.
• Collaborated with engineers to ensure realistic lighting, textures, and spatial alignment in AR models.
• Focused on performance optimization, ensuring that even complex 3D furniture models loaded quickly without lag.

Features & Functionality

To create a truly immersive and user-friendly experience, the app was built around three core features that worked in harmony:

A Smarter Way to Browse

One of the most common frustrations in furniture shopping is sifting through thousands of products. Discover Furniture made this process easier by offering:

• Intelligent Search & Filters: Users could browse by style, color, size, price range, or category.
• Personalized Recommendations: AI-driven suggestions based on browsing history and preferences.
• Save & Compare: Customers could bookmark their favorite pieces and compare them side by side.
• Social Sharing: Users could share images of furniture with family and friends for feedback before purchasing.

This feature acted as the first step in a seamless funnel, allowing users to shortlist products before experiencing them in AR/VR.

Examining Every Detail Before Buying

A key aspect of luxury shopping is attention to detail. To replicate this experience digitally, the 360° View feature enabled customers to:

• Rotate furniture models in all directions to inspect craftsmanship and textures.
• Zoom into fine details like stitching, material grains, and finishes.
• View furniture in different lighting conditions, mimicking real-world environments.
• Switch between color and material variants instantly.

This feature not only increased user confidence in purchase decisions but also reduced return rates by ensuring customers had a realistic expectation of the product.

Bringing Furniture into Your Home

The game-changer of the app was its AR integration, allowing users to virtually place furniture in their living spaces. This feature offered:

• True-to-scale AR models for accurate size estimation.
• Real-time room scanning, adapting furniture placement to space dimensions.
• Move, rotate, and resize functionality for perfect positioning.
• Multi-piece setup, enabling users to see how multiple items fit together.
• One-tap purchase directly from the AR view.

This feature was instrumental in bridging the trust gap for online furniture shoppers, as they could visualize their selections in real-world context before making a purchase.

Tangible Impact on Business & Customers

The AR/VR app was a massive success, not only improving customer experience but also driving significant business impact:

Testimonial

"The introduction of the FurnishSpace AR/VR app revolutionized our home furnishings shopping experience, enabling customers to explore our products in a realistic virtual environment, making informed buying decisions, and driving our sales growth. We are immensely proud of the work accomplished and grateful to everyone who contributed to this project's success."
_{― Mr. R. T., CTO}

Expanding Immersive Retail

The success of the FurnishSpace app paved the way for future innovations in immersive retail. Based on customer feedback and data insights, the roadmap included:

• ‍AI-powered room recommendations, suggesting furniture that complements existing decor.
• Integration with smart home devices, enabling voice-controlled browsing.
• VR-based store walkthroughs , offering a complete digital showroom experience.

By leveraging AR and VR technologies, I helped transform a traditional, showroom-dependent industry into a dynamic, digital-first experience. Through thoughtful design, rigorous research, and scalable execution, this project not only elevated the brand's customer experience but also set a new benchmark for the future of immersive commerce.