Ikea. Love it or hate it. Chances are at some point you will have tested the strength of your relationship there. The number of times me and the misses have been shopping at Ikea and I have walked out abandoning my shopping cart in the middle of the store. There is something about spending 2 hours foraging for individual pieces that are spread out in random locations that drives me crazy. When my Ikea rage dies down and I get home the fun begins in trying to understand the instructions to actually assemble the thing. But I digress, today’s blog is not about my shopping experiences but how Ikea are using augmented reality to help shoppers test out items in the home before going to the store.

 
The idea is a simple one, print a marker that corresponds to the item you are interested in buying, place it in the room where you think it will fit, then view the room using your mobile phone or webcam and see how the item blends in with its new surroundings.

My.IKEA 

 
There is an interesting piece on mobiadnews that goes into more details about the Ikea application. If your eager to give it ago, you’ll also find links to a demo here. 
 
I’m not to sure of this video, having no sound its hard to tell if this is something official from Ikea or someones pet project, but it is an interesting idea on how those hard to follow assembly instructions could be improved.
 

Ikea 2.0

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