Lowe’s Canada is bringing consumers’ home-improvement visions to life with “Holoroom,” an augmented reality experience that launched at two stores in the Greater Toronto Area.
Working with Lowe’s Holoroom Concierge, customers planning a bathroom remodel can choose paint colours, flooring and fixtures from a 3D catalogue. Then, in a specially designed room, they can tour a 3D model of their design through an iPad, and when they’re in the room, they can make changes if they like. The technology is limited to bathrooms for now, but Lowe’s plans to roll out other categories in the future.
“We didn’t build this to have some cool tech thing in the store. It really solves a customer need,” said Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs. “Customers have a hard time envisioning how all the [different elements] would actually look together. And even if they can, their spouse probably can’t.
“It’s really hard to communicate the vision you have to somebody else… so a lot of times projects don’t ever happen,” he added. “This allows people to take real Lowe’s products, put them in a virtual, immerse environment and see how they would look together and be able to quickly make changes.”
If it sounds like it’s straight out science fiction, it is. Lowe’s Innovation Labs, which brings together “uncommon partners” to develop new innovations, works with a team of science fiction authors.
“We give them all of our marketing research and trend data and then they write stories that have characters and conflict that show the convergence of these trends and technologies to see how it would affect people’s lives,” said Nel. “Then we turn those into comic books and those are our strategic documents. The Holoroom was a comic book about two years ago.”
Lowe’s Innovation Labs used the same process when it developed customer service bots in the U.S.
Nel said Lowe’s plans to roll out the Holoroom to other stores. “We know that these first two Holorooms won’t be the end-all be-al l— this is by no means the final product,” he said. “It works amazingly well… but I wouldn’t even call this version 1.0, I would call it version .5.”
Customers who take part in the experience will receive a take-home printout of their 3D model. They can share the model with family and friends via the Lowe’s MyHoloroom app, which will be available in early 2015.
Photo: Sylvain Prud’homme, president of Lowe’s Canada and Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs, introduce the Holoroom to customers in the North Etobicoke store.
