Try furniture before you buy
Introduction
What is this project about?
The goal of the augmented reality app is to showcase the most recent FROMMHOLZ legendary sofas products, to offer end-consumers a free decision-making tool and, with that, provide the manufacturer FROMMHOLZ – legendary sofas with a sales aid. The FROMMHOLZ brand is to be well-placed as a brand in the digital sector. With the augmented reality app, end-consumers can review which sofa model they like best in their own room before making a purchase – virtually on the display of a smartphone or tablet.
Considerations
The app should target as many mobile devices (iOS, Android) as possible while using SLAM, ARCore, ARKit. We decided for the AR plug in by Vuforia. With a view to the performance of mobile devices, only 3D models with as few polygons as possible can be used. The virtual sofa models can be individually looked at from all sides. Via touch, the user can also select another model as well as click on links to product catalogues (pdf). A photo can be taken from every point of view in order to save it to memory or share it across social media channels. Apart from the individual products (furniture models) modeled in 3D, additional photographed products in a specific setting are to be displayed as an image slideshow. Furthermore, an HTML microsite in responsive design was integrated in the app, which contains further information about the company. There is seamless interplay between the HTML microsite and the parts of the app that were natively programmed in C#, Java or ObjC. The mobile app for iOS and Android should be as easy to handle and user-friendly as possible.
Used applications, SDKs, and APIs:
#Vuforia, #Java, ##ObjC, JS, C#, #HTML5, #CSS3, #Photoshop, #3dsMax, #Dreamweaver, #Xcode, #Android Studio, #Unity3d, Muse, Excel
DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Phase 1
Prototyping
Persona, characteristics of our typical user
End-consumer, potential purchasers of furniture, field sales representatives from the customer, specialist shops
Concept created with
Excel, sketches, texts, UI buttons, CI FROMMHOLZ:
Designing the app's UI color palette, the UI layout.
Modeling the animated models on the basis of mechanical drawings.
Design development details
3D models
Using technical drawings and high-resolution photo material, first a high- and low-poly 3D-model was modeled for each individual product. Afterwards came texture, lighting, renderings, an export for additional use in the app, and compression for mobile devices.
User interface
The design of the microsite and the user interface follows the corporate design of the FROMMHOLZ brand, especially in terms of colors and fonts with accents in trendy colors.
Visuals
In order to avoid sticky app performance, I worked on finding the right balance between low-res textures and good visual quality, low-poly 3D models.
Test no 1
of the very first prototype The users of the first tests did not recognize the gesture features to move and rotate a virtual sofa in the AR scene. We decided to add a kind of tutorial as well as a demo video to demonstrate how to place, to translate and to rotate a sofa.
DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
Phase 2
Improvements
We created a tutorial scene with icons and other visual elements to explain to the user how to place, to translate and to rotate a model with the well-known gestures (tap, drag, rotate etc.)
Test no 2
Per request from the client FROMMHOLZ, we adjusted the speed and response of those gestures.
CONCLUSION
The AR app showcases the most recent FROMMHOLZ legendary sofas products. It offers a user-friendly interface and ease of operation. It includes information about manufacturers and product-relevant information. It was already successfully used in its first version (prototype) during special trade fairs by field sales representatives, specialist shops, as well as end consumers. App-Launch, prototype Version 1.0: In September 2018, iOS and Android Augmented-Reality Plugin: Vuforia Development in C#, Java, ObjC, HTML5, CSS3, JS.
#ar #augmentedreality #product #visualizer #produktvisualisierung #mobileapp #ios #android #productlaunch #marketingtool #salestool #arcampaign
Get the app
Credits:
AVK Terwey, B. Terwey product images by © FROMMHOLZ