Earlier this year, Lowes and Microsoft teamed up to improve their retail experience with the use of augmented reality. Redesigning a home has always been a hassle going back and forth, so the aspect of making only one visit to the store instead of multiple is an appealing prospect for many Lowe’s shoppers. Today, Jennifer Stevens from the HoloLens team presented an update to the Low/Microsoft partnership at Microsoft Ignite 2016.
As noted by Satya Nadella himself, it all starts with an idea. Using the popular collection social media like Pinterest, customers often collect their style and imagine what their dream home might look like. Now that dreaming can become a reality with the integration of Pinterest board links into the Lowes Hologram Experience application.
Doing so collects everything in one local spot for Lowes to compare to its products. Thanks to the Deep Neural Network, all of the images are analyzed and shows results based on what the customers would like based on their interests filtered by percentage of confidence. The product catalog opens up to more customization swatches.
Even with the capability to cross reference Pinterest boards, Lowes and Microsoft are taking it one more step further. With the augmented reality device, they can give the customer an up close view of their potential products. Cards will hover over products such as cabinets or appliances allowing changes to colors, models, and more.
This is only one example of how Lowes can use the HoloLens to reinvent home remodeling. But not only will it make shopping easier, but innovate production based on a valuable feedback loop. When recordings are analyzed, telemetry will reveal what customers spent the most time looking at, changed, and preferred. Cortana’s voice recognition can even note what phrases and words describe certain elements in the model to produce a higher and more honest response from customers.
