The idea that you never have to leave the house in order to go on a shopping spree might sound like a sci-fi dream for generations before us, that or a dystopian nightmare of slobs. But the truth is, shopping at home is arguably the most convenient way to shop, and this experience is heading for an upgrade thanks to AR and VR.
PayPal has recently announced the approved patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office titled, “Augmented Reality View of Product Instructions.” The goal is to develop a pair of AR glasses that would create a ‘look-and-buy’ shopping experience that uses your PayPal account to purchase items just by looking at the product and then navigating a pop-up AR menu. While this might not be an at-home experience, it will certainly change shopping in person dramatically.
But this is just the start. Thanks to numerous startups and business working on VR, you can now shop virtually from the comfort of your own home. In fact, as the below video demonstrates, you can now step into the world’s first virtual department store from the comfort of your own home. eBay (who owns PayPal) and Alibaba are both examples of businesses that have VR shops, and box stores like IKEA, Amazon, and other shopping apps allow customers to preview products in AR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAuiXhJPnr8
As previously mentioned here on the Sociable, trying before you buy through the use of VR is a fantastic way to give customers a taste of the experience or product on offer. Decorilla, a company that combines traditional in-home interior design with technology, has utilized VR to provide customers with a taste of what they can expect from their new design.
Before and After VR with Decorilla
“From day one, we have always provided customers with photo-realistic 3D renderings of their spaces to help them to see what everything (including new and old pieces) would look like together in their new design. Thus, bringing that into a virtual reality world was a natural next step and the invention of Google Cardboard and other mobile-phone based VR goggles made the technology far more widespread and accessible,” stated Agnieszka Wilk, the CEO of Decorilla.
In light of these developments, we may soon be living in a world where you will never need to leave your house for anything, not even to change the design of your house. While this might seem like a lazy future, is undoubtedly a future with more options and certainly more opportunity, especially for those who are unable to leave the house, or simply don’t want to, because let’s face it, we’ve all had those days.
