1. There is basically nothing shown in that video that is not something that is already within the capability of an average smartphone. Nearly every interaction they demonstrate is some combination of simple search + geolocation. It’s not that that doesn’t allow you to do some pretty slick stuff, it’s just that it’s not earth-shattering.
2. Almost nothing is done with Augmented Reality. For me, I want to see the virtual world interacting and complementing the real world for it to truly qualify as augmented. This seemed more like attaching the output of a typical Android interface to a pair of glasses. There was no demonstration of integration with gesture of any kind, and I kept waiting for things to appear, like when he looked at the street painting, I expected the name of the artist to pop-up or the wikipedia page about it to load. Even the street directions were not especially well “augmented”.  Google has the street view footage, you could overlay the real world and the street view world so that you could never doubt you were going the right way. None of that was present.
3. There was one really cool, and as far as I know, really hard problem that they had appeared to solve in the video: a device that recognizes when you are talking to it and not to someone else. The narrator in the video talks throughout and only when appropriate does it respond to his voice. He even starts working with it using the icon interface and then begins speaking instructions, which it recognizes and then immediately switches entry modes . If they have created a device that can do that kind of speech processing, it would be amazing. Way more so than the AR tech.
4. There are a lot of unanswered questions for something like this. Where would you put the battery? How much power would it need? Does Google in fact imagine that it would essentially replace your smartphone, or is it meant to integrate with other devices? It seems the best way you could get this to work is if you also carried a cell phone, where most of the computation was done, and then the glasses were the screen and input device. That way, the glasses might need almost no power with new display technology.  Also, I don’t think Temple Run would be nearly as fun with head twitches as it is with swipes, so I would expect a cell-type device is here to stay for at least a little while.

So what is to be made of this announcement? I think first, this is a “what if” video that isn’t necessarily intended to express their end game, nor perhaps even something they are putting a lot of resources into. On the other hand, they went out of their way to not do anything in the video that would make a reasonable observer say “no way, that can’t be done yet”. This leads me to believe that perhaps this is further along than we think. I really do hope that in the later versions, they lean more heavily on real AR, instead of just digital dashboard type stuff. If they can start to integrate the real world cues with head position (or even gaze!) and then add in the geolocation and the Personal Assistant interface, that would really give you something powerful. For instance, with our retail visualization software, you could look at a piece of furniture in a store and the system would grab the piece from our collection to generate a snapshot of how it would look in your living room, seconds later.

Project Glass does offer a very interesting glimpse of what the next generation of personal tech might look like. I will be curious to see what, if anything, they actually produce and bring into the marketplace.

Visitor comments have been both lucrative and reaffirming in our quest to revolutionize the retail experience. While captured in the moment by our social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, here’s a recap of some of our favorite overheard responses as we flexed our Visualizing muscles for interested passersby:

“It gets the customer closer to saying yes.”

“It’s just mining the right formula that’s going to get the sale. Definitely unique.”

The psychological relief for consumers who can see these big ticket items augmented onto photos of their own spaces cannot be understated. Sales conversion rates–or the ratio of consumers who browse versus those who buy–especially for big ticket items, tend to range from 2-6%. With the YOUReality Visualizer integrated into their sales process, our clients have seen their sales conversion rates leap enormously, to rates as high as 50%.

This hike in sales has less to do with the Augmented Reality technology, which itself is an eye- and attention-grabbing tool in the realm of sales and marketing, and more to do with the implication of such a technology serving a unique and practical function. Seeing these 3D products–from outdoor kitchens to living room furniture to office equipment–in a consumer’s own space breaks down the barriers that online 2D product catalogs inherently create. Questions of size, style, color, proportion, and overall feel of a piece of furniture or appliance can be answered as assuredly as if the products were being altered and moved around in the consumer’s very room, without the expense or hassle of physically moving these products in and out of a consumer’s actual space.

“That’s so interesting.. this is the first time I’ve seen Augmented Reality being used for something other than promotions!”

The true potential of Augmented Reality has only just begun to be discovered and properly utilized. Marketing promotions–some informative, some gimmicky, some in-between–dominated the earliest adoptions of Augmented Reality, and generally had users holding a camera phone up to a movie poster or print advertisement or building face as augmented pictures, videos, and other information appeared on the phone or tablet screen. But as software engineers, app developers, and even forward-thinking marketers realized more practical applications of such a powerful technology, Augmented Reality has finally begun to prove its worth in a variety of professions, including the future of retail.

YOUReality is proud to be one of the first companies to utilize this cutting-edge technology to bring the virtual retail experience to life. Augmenting an infinite amount of 3D-modeled products onto a 3D rendering of users’ actual spaces is set to revolutionize both online and in-store sales processes.

“I love what they do on HGTV, and this [Visualizer] seems to be a lot like that.”

We get this cultural reference often–YOUReality brings HGTV even closer to home! Or in other words, YOUReality’s Retail Visualization Solutions put the power of the HGTV decorators you know and love right at your own fingertips. Our Visualizers are not only practical, convenient, and effective, they’re also extremely user-friendly and actually fun to use. And if there’s any way to infuse the retail experience with entertainment and imagination, Augmented Reality has led us to a viable solution.

Check out this photo slideshow from our IBS demo bonanza:

Many, many thanks to our booth sponsor Energy Solutions Center and to the National Association of Home Builders for hosting such a great show. We enjoyed meeting and working with all of you–vendors, visitors, and event organizers alike–and we hope to see and work with you again in the near future!

The YOUReality Visualizer showing some love to our booth partner, Energy Solutions Center!

Our ESC Visualizer features photos of backyard and porch areas from a variety of angles to provide our visitors with several options and perspectives for the backdrop of their demo. We then access our catalog of outdoor furniture and gas appliances, including gas lamps and heaters, gas grills, outdoor kitchens, and various pieces of outdoor furniture–the colors, fabrics, and textures of which are further customizable, which was an exciting feature for many of our visitors.

We then introduce the new eraser and measurement functions (as described in our IBS intro post) and open the floor to questions to allow each individual visitor to visualize how our unique, cutting-edge software can best be applied to his or her specific business. This has led to both business card-trading and idea-swapping about compelling additions and customizations for improving the scope, usability, and versatility of the visualizer–two of the main reasons we love participating in these events!

We spent the first day of IBS performing product demos for our stream of visitors, which included everyone from gas and energy utility representatives to furniture/appliance retailers and manufacturers to interior designers for outdoor kitchens. Our Facebook and Twitter pages have documented some great, memorable moments, and we encourage you to follow along whether or not you were able to attend IBS this year.

Check out some Day 1 photos from our booth and around the event!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

And stay tuned for more coverage of IBS–Day 2!

YOUReality is proud to be a part of this annual event with our client Energy Solutions Center, supporting and promoting their natural gas solutions via our updated and re-released 3D Augmented Reality-enabled Online Retail Visualizer. Energy Solutions Center represents 43 of the largest gas utilities in the US, with more than 63 million visitors to their sites. As our client of two years, ESC is relaunching their YOUReality visualizer as part of their gas clients’ promotion of outdoor kitchens and living areas.

The public relaunch of our flagship product, the flash-enabled Online Retail Visualizer, touts exciting new and upgraded features. Our new Flash platform represents significant improvements to the visualizer’s overall performance, usability, speed, accuracy, and reach, as it allows our software to deliver multiple user experiences over platforms that cover 99% of the computer-using population, including tablets and all major web-enabled browsers.

Part of the visualizer feature set, the Eraser technology takes our software’s capabilities to a new level by enabling users to digitally erase unwanted objects from their own room photos without having to physically remove them from the camera view beforehand. Measurement technology allows us to know in real inches the distance between objects–not just in relative distance but actual distance in inches from one point to the next. This will allow for 2D printouts and schematics of products that need to be installed. This specialized use of Augmented Reality to measure and define actual dimensions was previously unheard of without a professional–and expensive–application like a 20-20 design tool. Our recent developments have now made this technology readily available as a web tool for consumer use and beyond.

If you’re attending the 2012 IBS, please visit us at the Energy Solutions Center booth, located at W3129, a stone’s throw from the Lowe’s and GMC displays. If you’re unable to come out to Orlando this week, please stay tuned here for live blogging throughout the event, and check out our YOUReality Facebook page and Twitter for #IBS2012 updates!

As January 2012 comes to a close, we look back at our annual month of resolutions, fresh starts, new plans and budgets, exciting innovations, and predictions for the future. 2012, amidst all its apocalyptic hype, is shaping up to be a booming year for many industries worldwide, particularly interactive technologies and consumer electronics.

The annual, globally-renowned International Consumer Electronics Show (CES)–held this year in Las Vegas, NV, from Jan. 10th-13th–showcases any and every technological development you can imagine, from the latest in 3D televisions and tablet computers to electric cars and smarter smartphones. But one technology seemed to stand out from the rest as it captivated info-craving consumers, techies, bloggers, marketers, and business folk alike with eye- and attention-grabbing displays and growing opportunities for versatility and development: Augmented Reality.

2012: The YeAR of AR

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the context-aware overlaying of graphics, sounds, GPS data, and other information on a live view of the physical, real-world environments captured by the camera on a computer, smartphone or tablet device. This real world element differentiates Augmented Reality from Virtual Reality, which is the immersion of a user in an entirely digital world (the two terms are often incorrectly interchanged).

Over the past two decades, Augmented Reality has embarked on the gradual climb from practicum to the public to your pocket, with early uses in military projects, museum exhibits, and feats of public awe. A spectacle at best, AR still hadn’t quite amounted to the expectations championed by splashy presentations or some techxperts’ grand predictions for its impending mass consumption.

But considering the largely positive feedback from this year’s CES attendees and blogosphere, 2012 may very well be the “YeAR of AR.” This year AR developers may finally see the same explosive growth enjoyed in recent years by mobile and tablet computing–the very devices which have enabled consumers to use and explore Augmented Reality and its futuristic features.

CES coverage from Yahoo/ABC News’ blog This Could Be Big, for example, reports that the Augmented Reality app from Aurasma–referred to as “the world’s first visual browser”–turned enough heads this year to be named a finalist for CNET’s Best of CES awards. This free app allows users to “discover, create, and share visual content, integrated in the real world” with interactive content embedded in printed images, products, and landmarks via the camera and screen of their smartphones or tablet devices. With the Aurasma app loaded, point your phone at a $20 bill, a movie poster, or box of toys, and watch them come to life on screen in real time.

Death of the QR Code?

Perhaps you’ve seen something like this before. Augmented Reality has often been compared to–and confused with–the Quick Response (QR) code, or a matrix bar code used for identifying data caches that can be scanned and expanded. Initially developed for tracking parts in the auto industry, these black and white squares have popped up like pixelated Rorschachs on newspaper and magazine ads, billboards, product labels, and so on, begging to be scanned by a curious observer. They are generally used to direct consumers to a company website or to more information about a particular product or company.

But as Augmented Reality has become more visible and accessible, some experts have predicted the use of the QR code to dwindle, if not disappear. However, though overlap does exist regarding the use of AR versus QR–directing consumers to company websites, affixing digitized information to a product or location, etc.–it is unlikely that Augmented Reality will entirely replace the QR code. Instead, the QR code will be used for specific, smaller-scale data, such as website links or company hours, and AR will bring life to larger-scale data, such as videos or face-tracking applications.

Augmented Reality: Fad or Fruitful Future?

While a legion of corporations from Ford Fusion to Absolut Vodka to Taco Bell have helped to increase the visibility of Augmented Reality, the potential and versatility of AR reach far beyond marketing gimmicks.

Augmented Planet’s predictions for 2010 noted that consumers would soon tire of the “throw data in the camera view and call it AR” applications. This notion threw into question whether Augmented Reality would continue to be seen as useful, or fade into the shadows of futuretech fads. AR’s earlier, more limited applications may in fact have dampened consumers’ and techies’ initial responses to the technology. But as Augmented Reality platforms have been made more available to developers and innovators, more creative and practical uses of Augmented Reality have been introduced in stride.

Over the next few posts, we will be examining the role of Augmented Reality in education, real estate, and daily life. How and where have you encountered Augmented Reality? Tell us about your experience and reactions to this technology.

In this week’s reading recap, we examine emerging technologies as well as trends and best practices recommended for home staging and decorating success in the new year.

Whether it’s the home you’re living in or the home you’re trying to sell, the design and decor of your living spaces leave lasting impressions on guests and potential buyers. Keeping up-to-date with interior design trends can help boost those impressions and ultimately increase the conversion of home showings to sales.

Per the AG Beat, today’s design culture is shifting from a stark modern look to creating a softer, warmer atmosphere, with circles incorporated into a wide range of design elements from decorative mirrors and wooden hoops to radial tile patterns and painted circles in lieu of wallpaper. Realtor.org’s Styled, Staged, and Sold blog expects reclaimed lighting pieces, over-sized artwork, and lower seating to be the hot trends of 2012, along with a resurgence of yellow, grey, and rustic looks for furniture and accessories.

The Real Estate Income blog suggests applying principles of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of placement, to home staging, such as removing large, clunky furniture and unnecessary personal effects from living spaces to allow good energy, or chi, to move freely throughout rooms without interruption. They also advise that the living area be equipped with strong, bright lights and that windows let in direct natural sunlight to help positive energy flow in.

The YPN Lounge blog from Realtor.org lists several simple changes, particularly for real estate professionals, that can improve the “green” qualities of your home-selling process (and save you some “green” along the way). Once a trend, and now a shift in mentality amidst trying environmental times and rising costs of fuel, “green” adjustments are popular, admirable for clients, and cost-effective. For example, save and reuse all single-sided printing paper, drink water from Brita pitchers instead of constantly buying bottles, and use tablets and/or e-signature programs for paperwork to reduce printing costs and paper use.

Professional Home Staging Expert Megan Morris discusses a unique selling approach from HGTV personality Cathy Hobbs in her recent blog post about “creating a story” as a marketing tool for targeted potential buyers. She writes that because buyers often need to feel an emotional attachment to a property before purchase, shaping a narrative around a home and its potential for a specific audience during showings could be an interesting and effective approach. But she also warns not to appear too limiting in this narrative, and to always keep homes looking neutral and impersonal enough to not alienate future buyers.

Now to shift to some of the more technical aspects of home buying and selling. Mobile and online videos are two of the predominant methods of communication, marketing, and content-sharing today. Smart phone/tablet apps and mobile marketing campaigns have taken off in nearly every industry, and the future of such online and mobile strategies continues to expand and evolve every day.

RIS Media reports on the introduction of a set of mobile marketing solutions geared specifically for real estate professionals, which are becoming increasingly popular and versatile as their use spreads rapidly around the country. Subscribers can use text messaging, QR codes, and mobile-enhanced websites to provide potential buyers with detailed property information, photos, and the listing agent’s contact information that can be accessed directly from their mobile phones.

Along with the increase in mobile/tablet apps, the creation and sharing of online photos and videos has increased across numerous industries and in a range of social capacities. Real estate stands as a prime industry to benefit from this technological shift, as home photos and virtual home tours can make a crucial first impression on home buyers, the vast majority of whom now begin their searches online.

According to Realtor Mag, nearly three-quarters of surveyed home owners prefer to work with real estate professionals who use videos to enhance their listings, as videos can add more context and texture to home browsing than static photos. Register Real Estate Advisors (RREA) Media has posted a helpful tutorial video about preparing and staging your home specifically for virtual video tours to be posted online–on your website, local listings websites, social media, and so on.

That’s a wrap on this week’s reading recap–and 2011. From all of us here at YOUReality, Happy Holidays and a Merry New Year!

In the giving spirit of the holiday season, we’d like to share with you the latest addition to the YOUReality blog: a weekly recap of articles, tips, statistics, announcements, and other interesting tidbits that we’ve been reading and would like to pass on to you, our readers. Mostly thematic, some more incidental, these posts–we hope–will be a regular resource of relevant content for your assorted professional and recreational interests.

This week, our winter/holiday edition zeroes in on issues that plague most non-retail businesses this time of year: how to maintain positive sales growth during the lethargic winter doldrums–particularly for real estate professionals, home stagers, and anyone selling a home during the holidays.

First–to sell, or not to sell? Between assembling the Christmas decorations, attending Christmas concerts and pageants, entertaining family, friends, and coworkers, traveling, cooking, shopping, and other holiday lagniappe, homebuyers and sellers have traditionally found the holidays to be too busy for much else. Plus, the season’s harsh weather conditions can keep even the most outdoorsy and last-minute-shopping frenzied of us in warm, familiar quarters.

But these facts aside, the majority of real estate professionals actually do suggest keeping your home on the market for a variety of reasons. The most obvious? Your home certainly won’t be sold while off the market either.

Realty Times notes that buyers house-hunting during the holiday season are likely that much more serious, and couples often coordinate their work and holiday schedules to be able to view homes together during this time of year. Plus, if everyone else is too busy for holiday home-browsing, the ones who do will miss the spring and summer rush, and thus have less competition and less stressful negotiations. Realtor.com supports these conclusions with survey statistics, and also adds that online photos of homes for sale are more important than ever for buyers during the cold, busy winter months.

Many real estate professionals offer specialized tips for overcoming the season’s unique challenges and ultimately using the wintry weather to your advantage. For example, the Your Life on the Move blog suggests keeping homes well lit even when no one is there to ensure your home is always as engaging as possible, particularly during the drastically shorter days of the winter months.

Realtor Mag has published a few articles on the subject, including one that suggests keeping your home’s thermostat at a cozy 65 degrees during showings, since potential buyers will likely be wearing winter coats and could become uncomfortable if they’re too warm and sweaty. Another Realtor Mag piece suggests keeping sidewalks and doorways clear of leaves, snow, and ice at all times to give potential buyers a clear path to the front door. This seems completely logical, if even a bit obvious, but the psychological implications of an obstacle-free entrance for buyers cannot be overstated.

As a home’s front yard and outdoor living spaces often color prospective buyers’ first impressions, home staging techniques normally applied indoors should make an outdoor appearance as well. Realtor.org’s Styled, Staged and Sold blog recommends lighting the outdoor gas fireplace or fire pit for evening showings (when applicable) and setting out knickknacks like coffee mugs or wine glasses on backyard tables to create a more attention-grabbing scene.

Realtor.com notes that 80% of their surveyed real estate professionals encourage sellers to light the indoor fireplace for showings, 59% suggest using winter scented home fragrances before an open house, and 54% advise setting the dining room table to showcase holiday entertainment. The Great Impressions Home Staging blog warns sellers not to overdo festive holiday decorations, and suggests choosing classic red, green, silver, and gold accents like candles, place mats, glittery “dusted” pine cones, or floral arrangements over more “cutesy” Christmas decorations like dolls, giant nutcrackers, and “Merry Christmas” signage.

And finally, the Real Estate Staging Association (RESA) has announced the 2012 finalists for their annual Home Staging Industry Awards. RESA members in the U.S. and Canada are recognized for their outstanding work throughout the previous year in a variety of categories: best products, innovators, rookie home stagers, professional stagers by region, realtor stagers, home staging companies, occupied staging, and even best home stagers’ spouses. Take a gander at some of the winning names and companies–maybe we’ll be seeing yours in 2013.

Tune in next week for our last recap of 2011–a collection of home staging and marketing tips to jump-start the new year!

Amidst rampant foreclosures and a climate of economic uncertainty, real estate professionals have become a bastion of hope for home buyers and sellers alike. According to the U.S. Census, 11.3 percent of 130 million housing units, or about 14 million homes, stood vacant last year—homes which need to be sold or rented, despite their empty, and as a result, less inviting, appearance. Besides a clean neighborhood, quality nearby schools, and a white picket fence, buyers seek an emotional attachment and positive visceral reaction to the home they ultimately want to purchase—an attachment not as easily developed to an empty room.

Real estate professionals have traditionally turned to home staging techniques for help in solving these issues—techniques which have advanced over time with the growth and development of digital technology.

According to the Real Estate Staging Association’s (RESA) Consumer’s Guide to Real Estate Staging, home staging is a “systematic and coordinated methodology in which knowledge of real estate, home renovations, and creative design principles are applied to attract a buyer.” This includes arranging furniture, accessories, art, and even lighting to create an appearance and experience that will appeal to buyers more than a string of vacant rooms. According to RESA, and this New York Times article, home staging demonstrates to buyers the home’s “true potential.”

The RESA’s home staging guide includes two studies. The first followed 97 properties on the market before and after the owners had the homes professionally staged. Before staging, the homes had remained on the market on average 181 days. After they were staged and relisted, those same homes were sold in 60 days on average. That’s 67% less time spent on the market, and 67% less time in which homeowners paid an unnecessary mortgage rather than your well-earned commission.

The other study followed homes that were staged before they were ever listed. Of the 184 homes studied, all were sold on average in 35 days. Regardless of which phase in the selling process it’s performed, home staging has proven itself a beneficial tool for moving homes, especially vacant units, off the market and into the lives of happy new homeowners.

Traditional Home Staging: Its Benefits and Limitations

The benefits of home staging practices cannot go understated. Staging empty rooms with furniture and accessories can positively affect anything from faster sales conversions and higher sales prices and appraisal values, to customers’ evaluations of how well the property is maintained, how versatile its decor can be, and how well they can envision their families one day living in it. It’ll even serve you, Rising Star Real Estate Professional, as a tool to highlight your professional appearance and refined ability to properly address the specific needs of your clients, and can even help to secure referrals and repeated customers.

Home staging originated with real estate professionals, furniture retailers and manufacturers, delivery workers, and, in many cases, interior designers all contributing to the final product–a furnished home fit for buying and selling. Real estate professionals and designers evaluated the rooms’ dimensions and possible decor and chose furniture from catalogs of furniture retailers and manufacturers. That furniture was either rented or bought and then delivered to the home and set up accordingly.

If only the process were as easy as it sounds.

As if you needed us to describe your own headaches: furniture delivered with incorrect dimensions or color patterns, late or no-show deliveries the morning of a massive open house, furniture placement run amok by layout-botching workers–not to mention the venture’s hefty price tag, which could easily escalate to five figures after paying for a staging professional and rental furniture.

And what about the infinitely varied and constantly changing enigma that is consumer taste? Can any one design please all of your different clients? Especially to the point of a converted sale? Or do you order variations of furniture sets for different clients, creating all the more cost, headache, and backache for you?

Furthermore, with the exponential growth of communication and shopping via the Interwebs, a significant percentage of home browsing now begins online. According to the National Association of Realtors, 89% of buyers use the Internet to search for a home, and 98% of them think that photos are the most useful feature on brokerage websites. Online shopping in general provides consumers with faster, easier browsing and competitive price-comparison, and the housing market has not been immune to this fundamental shift in customer-product relationships. This means that there will inevitably be more eyeballs on your website’s photo-offerings, as well as a contingent of e-clients who can compare you to every one of your fiercest competitors between browser tabs and a few simple mouse clicks.

To provide different customers with a variety of furniture styles and layouts to suit their tastes, you would have to order and arrange one set of furniture, photograph it, and upload it. Then again, you place another order, and arrange, photograph, and upload another set of furniture, repeating until you feel you could satisfy current and potential clients with the array of photos now uploaded to your website. Plus, the prevalence of online virtual home tours–and the multiple photos required to be dubbed a “tour”–compounds your need of fast, versatile imaging for the many listings on your website, as you maintain stride with the latest real estate technology.

Virtual Staging: The Next Step

The concept of Virtual Staging provided real estate professionals with a more affordable, more convenient, and more e-commercial alternative to staging actual furniture pieces in empty rooms of homes for sale. Instead, real estate agents could simply send in a photo of the room(s) and descriptions of what types, styles, and colors of furniture and accessories and their placement in the room. Fingers-crossed–and a pocketful of rabbit feet and four-leaf clovers for good measure–you hope that in a few days you’ll receive the virtually-furnished photo per your order.

Now, if Virtual Staging companies and Burger King franchises shared more in common, you may indeed have had it your way (with a side of fries). But let’s face it: Virtual Staging companies can’t see through your mind’s eye, and even the most eloquent of decor diplomats can’t always clearly negotiate tactical positioning to a company who literally speaks another vocational language.

If the photos returned are not to your liking–or worst case, completely unusable–you have to resend the photo(s), rewrite and resend descriptions, and wait for them to get it right, again and again. This process involves graphic designers–who may or may not have any home decor experience–choosing your furniture, matching your photo’s perspective in a 3D drawing program, positioning the furniture in correct dimension and perspective and placing them on top of your photo, and then rendering out the finished image. Perfect or imperfect, these renderings will run you about $75 or more per photo until eventually, you’ll likely find yourself thinking, “If only I had the tools to create these photos myself…”

Enter Interactive Virtual Staging Solutions.

Interactive Virtual Staging: The Future of Real Estate, Today

The technology behind Interactive Virtual Staging empowers real estate professionals with innovative virtual staging tools and channels for communicating with clients throughout home-buying transactions. A marker placed in the middle of a room allows the Interactive Virtual Staging software to construct a to-scale 3D model of the room itself from a photo uploaded from any digital camera or mobile phone. Real estate professionals can then select furniture and accessories from a catalog and virtually place 3D models of those furnishings in the room while retaining dimension, scale, and perspective in real time.

In short, with little more than a digital photo of the room(s) to be staged, an idea of customer preference, and an eye for quality design, real estate professionals themselves can create room arrangements to their liking quickly, inexpensively, and, as a result, in more combinations than previously allowed by time and budget restraints.

Now do we have your attention?

Able to place 3D models of furniture and accessories available on the market into photos of their clients’ homes, real estate professionals enjoy instant gratification and ease of interaction with full control over the process of furniture selection and placement, as well as the photo’s end results, in real time. These photos can then be saved to your account for later recall, shared on Facebook and other social media, or uploaded to your website or the MLS–allowing both clients and competitors to marvel at your successful foray into Interactive Virtual Staging.

Picture it: you’ve got the brochures and cheese plates carefully arranged for the day’s big open house. The structure of the home itself is beautiful, but bare due to an unexpected foreclosure. Laptop ready for action, the screen displays three different setups and styles of furniture for the high-ceiling, window-lined living room so bright and sunny, the room very nearly smiles back. An older couple enters first, and you toggle to your more traditional setting of cedar with beige upholstery and antique lamp accents. Glancing between the screen and the room itself, their faces reflect approval of the space’s potential setup, though the wife wonders aloud how the longer sofa would look on the opposite side of the room. “Just one moment, ma’am,” you say as, with a few deft mouse movements, you quickly and easily move that virtual sofa from one virtual point of placement to another, and then demonstrate that same placement change from three different angles or perspectives. Thrilled, the couple asks to see more of the home.

As you guide them to the equally sunny kitchenette, a newlywed couple walks through the front door. Zipping back to the laptop, you pull up photos of the room in a contempo casual setting, with polished-nickel beveled glass end tables and a trendy black and white motif–encouraging them to flip through the photos’ different room perspectives for the full effect whilst shuffling your first potential buyers into the breathtaking crystal chandelier-focused dining room. Some photos feature more modern furniture stylings, some more colorful, some traditional, some more simple and subdued. But all are accessible through one visualizer, one computer, and one tech-savvy, ahead-of-the-game real estate professional poised to break up cat fights over a home that previously sat on the market for more than six months.

This isn’t where the real estate industry is heading in the next decade–this moment is now. Interactive Virtual Staging software has already been developed, and will only become more user-friendly and available on more platforms–online for retailers, on mobile and tablet devices for consumers, etc.–over the coming years.

How do Interactive Virtual Staging solutions fit into your budget, timeline, sales methods, and, let’s be honest, active imagination? If The Sims franchise or HGTV’s Designed to Sell has ever piqued your interest, then these tools would not only benefit your day-to-day business, it would make work more fun and interesting to boot.

Imagine that.

Introducing Our Hidden Creative Report Series

Akin to the statistical retail data gathered by our software, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and third-party reports and case studies have made a strong case for why Retail Visualization Solutions work. One such report–“Sales Technology: Selling with Augmented Reality” released by Hidden Creative this past September–has been picked up by several technology and Augmented Reality blogs, such as this piece from We Are Organized Chaos, and this piece from goAugmented. Hidden is a marketing communications agency that specializes in Augmented Reality (AR) services, and their latest report–available for free on their website–includes definitions, case studies, marketing strategies, and compelling reasons for AR’s success in the marketplace.

One such reason is what Hidden refers to as the psychologies underpinning the use of technology in sales and marketing. Broken down into four categories, these psychologies of technology parallel the very foundation of traditional sales and marketing techniques: touch, neuro-linguistics, storytelling, and risk management; we’ll examine each of these psychologies throughout our ongoing series of Hidden report analyses.

The psychology of touch, the most commonly used of the four, maintains that a customer’s physical, tactile engagement with a product decreases his or her “natural resistance and helps to change negative behavior.” In other words, in the same way that python at the zoo wasn’t nearly as scary once you touched its smooth, scaly brown back in the zookeeper’s hands, the decision whether or not to buy those new Sing-a-ma-jigs for the kids this Christmas wasn’t nearly as hard once you held, heard and played around with the ones on display. And once you sprawled across that chic, vintage French sleigh bed you’ve been eyeing for months, its out-of-range price tag suddenly seemed a bit more affordable.

As physical product engagement is one of the most pervasive and persuasive sales techniques, so too is it one of the greatest hurdles to be overcome by online and mobile retailers, as well as retailers and manufacturers of products too large or cumbersome for an in-store touch-fest. Retail Visualization, the day’s technological superhero, steps in to provide both a promising solution for emulating product engagement and a viable alternative that can be effectively applied in brick-and-mortar establishments.

One of the basic tenants of YOUReality’s Retail Visualization Solutions, 3D models of actual products available on the market supersede static 2D images currently available in print catalogs and online browsing. Being able to see, or visualize, a product from all angles and to control the rotation and placement of these objects in a space–especially while retaining correct scale and perspective–increases the likelihood of faster and final purchase decisions. Even though the consumer is not actually touching the coffee table or moving it to its new spot in the living room, the model’s 3D design and realistic movements can trigger a very similar psychological response–without the heat pad and ibuprofen later.

Furthermore, with our software packages, such as Design Center or the Online Retail Visualizer, users can upload a photo of their own space to fill with the 3D product models, lending an additional level of personal and emotional attachment to the decision-making process. Brick-and-mortar establishments will produce more and faster sales conversions as their customers can touch the actual products on display, and then see those same products as to-scale 3D models in a photo of their own home. Able to match dimension, style and color to their own space right their in the store, customers whip out the plastic with confidence in their purchase and excitement to go home and set up their new stylish ten-piece dining room. Facilitating that level of attachment and engagement with a product drives significant increases in sales conversion rates, as reports by Hidden and others have concluded.

Where 2D catalogs and even the most vivid of imaginations have failed us, Retail Visualization has assumed its new role in facilitating engagement between both customers and products and customers and their retailers and manufacturers. The psychological principles guiding our innate desire to learn and explore through the sense of touch can and have been applied to marketing techniques since the beginning. Combining those principles with sophisticated 3D modeling and Augmented Reality technologies–therein lies the future of retail and ecommerce.

Take, for example, this piece from We Are Organized Chaos, the official blog of Augmented Reality software developer Zugara, written last month. The self-explanatory headline—”Online Retailer’s Conversion Rates Up Nearly 5x Thanks to Augmented Reality”—and statistics within the article reflect a compelling shift in the future of retail. The numbers were generated by Zugara’s Webcam Social Shopper (WSS), currently licensed by the British online retailer Banana Flame–the same company mentioned in the NY Times article discussed in our last blog entry.

As browsing and shopping activity occurs on the Banana Flame website, various data points are recorded by the software for further analysis of the technology’s impact or influence on the overall sales process, start to finish. They are also sound indicators of general customer behavior, which can provide still more solutions for closing the gap between online customers and retailers and increasing the rate of sales conversion.

YOUReality’s Retail Visualization Solutions also provide our customers with this abundance of versatile and invaluable raw data, which can influence various aspects of the sales process:

• Design Center–a Lite version of which launched last week–can track how often specific branded sofas are inserted in subscribers’ 3D scenes. Brands selected more frequently may be more prominently displayed on retailers’ or merchandisers’ websites and marketing campaigns in the future to boost sales and increase effectiveness of marketing and merchandising.
• Our Online Retail Visualizer can track which pieces of our clients’ dining room furniture have high rates of placement in customers’ scenes, but low rates of actual sales. These particular products may benefit from an overhaul in design, purpose, price, marketing strategy, and so on, to identify and resolve certain issues and improve sales conversion rates in the future.
• Our Mobile Retail Visualizer can track changes in customers’ product selection amidst a manufacturer or retailer’s Facebook-exclusive coupon deal targeted specifically at mobile shoppers. This data demonstrates the relative value and efficacy of social media and targeted marketing for that particular company or industry.

Armed with these sets of data, among innumerable others, users of YOUReality’s Retail Visualization software tools have the power and foresight to better adapt to and prepare for changes in consumer trends, customers’ tastes and opinions, and future advancements in retail technology. A boardroom full of head-scratching over decreasing projected sales numbers or failed marketing strategies can now be replaced with viable, research- and analysis-based proposals, and more effective sales implementation verified by hard, raw data collected directly from the source: the Retail Visualization software itself.