We began building in-store augmented and virtual reality applications in 2013 as part of our larger vision of empowering customers with the confidence needed to design and build their homes. With this app, we brought this capability directly to customers’ homes, so they can easily visualize designs and style choices in their real spaces in real-time.

Features:

- Power measure: Quickly, intuitively capture room dimensions; limit product options to those that will fit your space.

- 3D designer: Select products from a virtual library and place them in the home in real-time to preview style choices.

- Save, snap & share: After designing the perfect space, save the project and share photos with friends or a professional contractor.

- Shopping lists and reviews: Create a shareable shopping list and find additional product information like reviews, related items and promotions.

Timeline: Google reached out to us on in late 2015 about a launch partnership to release an inaugural application on the Tango platform. The development for the Lowe’s Vision application began in February, 2016.

Implementation: We worked with merchants across the business to identify top products and new product categories for key retail departments – kitchen, bath, living spaces, and décor. Our team built the base platform for the application and then modeled the assets for the application by hand. Eventually, we switched methods and began 3D scanning the assets, which then pipelined into the app. We went through a series of tests on the Tango development kits, and then on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pros when they became available.

Placement and scale: The app launched on the Google Play Store in November, 2016 and can operate on any Tango-enabled device. We continue to update the application with more 3D assets on a regular basis.

This is a beta app so we are continuing to test and iterate. Our targets for the beta app were to determine a number of things:

- Is Tango was the correct platform for this application?

- Is the app in intuitive?

- Do customers like the app?

We studied these questions using neuroscience and gathered insights that are guiding the future of the app and other visualization tools. We have found that Tango's AR is the ideal platform for this application, with customers falling further into "green zones" for cognitive load, motivation, and emotional engagement metrics, as opposed to closer to the "red zone" with VR.

Furthermore, for the first time ever, we sold smartphones in our stores and online. We sold out of the phones online in the very first week, empowering countless customers with this digital power tool.

We have 4.8/5 rating on the Google Play Store.