Same like Overstock and IKEA before it, Target is tapping the magic of augmented reality to bypass anything that can make buying home goods a real headache.
While two objects (or sofas) cannot occupy the same space at the same time in the real world, they can in AR’s parallel universe.
Target calls the feature “See It In Your Space,” because, like Ikea’s Place app for iOS, you can literally use it to see what a piece of furniture would look like in your home.
Guests shopping the new Project 62 line can use the feature to place three-dimensional versions of real Target home products within photos of actual rooms at home, and move them around at proper scale to see how they’d look—all before buying the product.
Once a guest finds, say, a floor lamp or bedside table on Target.com using their smartphone, they simply tap the product’s See It In Your Space button and follow steps to do just that. All they need is a photo of the living space they want to decorate—which they can shoot in real-time or pull from an existing photo!
You simply need to take a picture of the space where you want to place, say, a couch in. When you choose a virtual item from the product list, just tap “See it in your space” and position and scale the couch wherever and however you want. You can add it to your cart straight from the AR interface if you decide that it’s a good fit. At this point in time, you can only choose from 200 piece of “Project 62” home products, but Target plans to add thousands more by 2018.
Target is currently using WebGL to perform the AR renders in its mobile website, but the company says that it may switch to a mobile app if the feature proves popular.
