Cedar is a home and furnishing app that allows users to see products in their home using AR technology before purchasing them for their space. In the app users can shop, view furniture in AR, create rooms, organize rooms, and share their AR room and experience with friends. This product was made to improve the accuracy of shopping experiences for users to therefore reduce returns when making expensive purchases like furniture. This was my final capstone project for my master's degree.
Before selecting the type of product I was going to make, I wanted to understand the current market. I dove into field and competitive research looking at the current players in the AR realm and ones that specifically focused on e-commerce. I started to download all sorts of apps on my phone including Ikea, Google Search, Target, Amazon to get an understanding.
I conducted a total of six user interviews with people from different backgrounds (age, occupation, and cultural background) and asked them questions about their experience shopping online along with their experience with AR. Over 100 post-it's created eight meta insights.
When it came to choosing a topic I leaned towards furniture. Many of my interviewees spoke about their interests on using AR for furniture shopping due to the hassle of returns (costs/transportation). My sketches focused on key features that would solve the complaints users had with online shopping. These then moved to some low-fidelity wireframes.
When it came to choosing a topic I leaned towards furniture. Many of my interviewees spoke about their interests on using AR for furniture shopping due to the hassle of returns (costs/transportation). My sketches focused on key features that would solve the complaints users had with online shopping. These then moved to some low-fidelity wireframes.
This project gave me the opportunity to dive deeper into MVPs, site-mapping, and the AR space. I am not going to lie, there were some points where I needed more help than I expected (prototyping) but my amazing instructors gave me the guidance. I learned that prototyping isn't as easy as it looks. Especially when it comes to transferring our standard hand motions such as swiping up and double tapping to a Figma file which has its limits. In the future I'd like to build out more user flows and really look at how Cedar would work from a business perspective.
