Austin Soares, Product Designer

Overview

To celebrate the launch of a new iPhone and Apple’s enthusiasm for augmented reality (AR) experiences, the native mobile apps team added an item to our backlog to explore this further.

Illustration of a room with a transparent Chewy box on the floor, showing AR placement guideline arrows.

Months later, one of our UX researchers presented a data point that showed a sizable amount of customers started returns of pet furnishings due to the size being inaccurate or not measuring beforehand.

The cost to return these back to Chewy mounted so we started this ticket.

Two phone screens displayed side by side: one showing 'How to use AR' instructions, the other showing a measurement overlay on a carpet.

I created a 'how-to' guide on getting started as well as tips for an audience that may be new to AR.

A phone screen displaying measurements of a blue carpet, with a size chart for a dog bed shown below.

I added a special ability to call up the various product sizes for reference from within view.

I assisted in a dev effort spike and designed the experience across iPhone and iPad.

I worked closely with a dedicated engineer and PM to build both a measuring experience and the ability to place a dog bed in your space, which I rendered using a combination of applications including SketchUp, Blender, and Xcode.

Screenshot of 3D modeling software showing a Chewy box design, with two different views of the box.

I learned new skills with multiple programs like SketchUp and Blender to sell this experience.

Three phone screens side by side: the first showing a dog bed product page, the second showing AR surface detection, and the third showing the dog bed placed in the AR view.

I suggested making the button to get into the experience (at launch) prominent for the most-returned items. Pet furniture.

Skills I acquired or improved

Collaborating directly with an iOS engineer daily
Basic 3D modeling with Trimble SketchUp and Blender
Sizing, lighting, shading & materials
A now-archaic process converting .OBJ → .USDZ files via Terminal
Using Xcode, iOS Simulator, and testing on my own device for proof of concept

Challenges

Determining which products are specifically best-suited for AR
Getting dimensions just right for accuracy and being valuable to our customers’ experience
Product looked into 3D capture firms but product availability and cost proved to be challenging
Limited interest from leadership despite financial benefit
Ultimately, these features were removed altogether a few weeks after launch

Three phone screens side by side: the first showing a banana next to a very small Chewy box in AR on a table, the second showing a person kneeling next to a real-life size Chewy box in AR, and the third showing a dog bed in AR.

During the projects, I learned the critical importance of scale, built a box that adhered to real lighting conditions and poorly textured and painted the dog bed product.

Steps I would take if I could do it all over again

Buy in
- Nothing is perfect, but the timing was right. I wasn’t in a position at the time to gain a seat at the table with the executives that would have seen the value in this feature and given us a green light to pursue it.
Conducted more research on the products we should’ve rendered
- This was a fun exercise for me. I used SketchUp in the past for non-professional work, and to not only use this app, but to carry over the file into a dedicated 3D-modeling tool was very exciting.
Gotten a larger team together had we had the resources
- While it was awesome to work alongside a talented iOS engineer, having more on the team would have made the spike much quicker to build so we could have used more time to refine the design and experience more.
Made an Easter egg
- Since Chewy is an online store, it would have been a fun idea to make a top-down store layout featuring our products in aisles and feature bays. This would call-back to a bunch of live demos at Apple’s developer conferences and potentially could have brought us to both conversation and San Jose.