XR Review: Amazon View in Room

A Review on Amazon’s View in Room AR feature.

Published in

desn325-EmergentDesign

2 min readApr 5, 2019

Description

One of the Amazon Shopping App’s newest features is a view product in room option. To access this AR feature, from the app home screen you click on the camera icon in the search bar. This opens up Amazon’s Search by Camera screen. By swiping left, the View in Room AR feature will move on screen. You can then follow the prompts to select an item, and then place it into the room. After placing the item, you are giving the option to rotate and move the object within the room.

Audience

This app was made targeting the adult online shopper, as the items you can choose from are mostly furniture.

XR Implementation

This feature of the Amazon App is an example of mobile AR as it applies a digital representation of a product to a real world environment. It is a great application of AR because it is being used in a way to help the user solve a problem. The user is not sure a specific product will fit or look good in their home or room. This feature offers them a way to quickly and easily test out the item visually before making the purchase.

Supporting Technologies

There is some use of haptic feedback in this AR experience. When you place your item in the room, there is a slight vibration as the object appears in the room. The device camera is also a supporting technology, as the feature allows you to capture the object in a photo to share while it is displayed in your room.

Strengths

Simple to use
Solves a common problem for online shoppers

Improvements

The feature is hard to find among the rest of the Amazon App content. I’d like to see a AR button added to the product page, so as you are browsing you can then view a product you like in AR.
The digital versions of the products are obviously digital; I’d like to see more realistic versions that can adapt to the lighting in a room.
After placing an object, it was a bit cumbersome to have to use 2 fingers to rotate it to be the correct direction.
Finally, I’d like the option to add more than one item to the room at a time. Often I shop for 2 or 3 different pieces at the same time. It would be nice to view them together to make sure they fit in the space I have and make sure they look well together.