ARKit is Apple’s official entry in the world of augmented reality, and it’s easy to read it as a big play to create an ecosystem for, when the time is right, its long-rumoured pair of AR smartglasses. Thus far, one of the big apps that have punched through on social media is Ikea Place, which allows you to quickly and easily see whether Ikea furniture will work in your home. It also happens to be quite a lot of fun.
People have noticed, and they’ve taken to Twitter and Facebook to show off weird things they’ve done with the app. Like, you know, filling your small room with a whole bunch of lamps. Or turning a subway platform into a chic rest stop.
But this is Ikea. It’s a company that makes labyrinths disguised as retail stores, with restaurants so good that some people go just for the food. It makes furniture that tests the strength of relationships and punishes those who feel like they’re too good for instructions.
How did it suddenly become one of the biggest names in augmented reality?
The augmented catalogue
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No matter what you think of Apple, when it announces something, people pay attention. Even better when what it announces happens to be good, like ARKit, which to us already feels like one of the more solid and impressive AR platforms out there. The quality of the augmented reality is impressive, which in turn helps developers create better, higher quality augmented reality experiences.
And that’s pretty much what happened with Ikea Place. Michael Valdsgaard, Ikea’s leader of digital transformation, says that the company immediately launched into putting together a new app. “All of a sudden there is this new technology that’s maturing, and it can do things that we have been dreaming about since we founded the company almost”.
Ikea learned some valuable lessons from its original AR app. It’s built for the more comfortable portrait mode, the way most people take video with their phone. It’s got a conversational interface rather than throwing menus at you. You just point it at the ground and can start plopping down virtual furniture. A large part of that simplified interface is due to Ikea not having to worry about the underlying technology as much.
“ARKit solved some technical issues that nobody else has solved,” Valdsgaard says. “That makes placing the object very easy and it locks into position and you don’t have to do things beforehand other than pointing your camera towards the floor. And when that happens it tracks the floor, takes the plane and understands where it is in the room and the dimensions and so forth.”
Plus, Ikea can consistently add items to the app, though right now it’s prioritising items that work on a horizontal plane (due to ARKit limitations) and big-ticket furniture. Expensive, and large, pieces of furniture are the things people mull over the most, and the things they most regret purchasing when they get it wrong.
Ikea initially planned on having only 500 items available in the app, but quickly ballooned that number up to 2,000, with plans to continually add more as fast as possible.
Fun for you, practical for them
Ikea’s idea is a practical solution to a problem all homeowners face, but it’s also a very clever marketing tool. “It’s likely the cost of building the app will have already been saved in reduced marketing costs and the ROI will continue with better conversion and engagement,” says Piers Harding-Rolls, AR/VR research coordinator at IHS Markit.
Stacking virtual sofas on subway platforms might be fun for you, but sharing that with others is going to create buzz, and suddenly you’ve got a viral way to get people to download your app. But it’s not just Ikea that’s looking to take advantage of AR to help its business. Harding-Rolls points out that both furniture and beauty companies have been looking at augmented reality for a while because of its ability to smooth out the buying process, increase purchases and reduce return rates.
These industries currently rely on people coming to physical store and trying things out. This is why a company like Sephora takes so much time making sure its customers find the right fit, handing them free samples to try in-store. If the customer gets it wrong, they’ll return it and Sephora will have to throw the product out.
Source: Wareable