Ikea has taken steps to improve its widely distributed homewares catalogue by including augmented reality.

Ikea has taken steps to improve its widely distributed homewares catalogue by including augmented reality. The new features in the 2013 version of the US catalogue allow shoppers to hover their smartphones over selected pages to get added content, such as image galleries and videos.

Ikea augmented reality catalogue

The Ikea catalogue features augmented reality content that users can access with their smartphones or tablets.

The technology works by prompting customers to download an app, which is clearly explained at the start of the Ikea catalogue. With this they can then interact with a series of icons in the catalogue to see more information about selected products.

The information ranges from how-to videos to ‘X-ray’ photographs of the inside of storage systems.

Ikea has realised that replacing the catalogue with a digital version was not the best idea in this instance. The retailer prints 211 million copies of the catalogue each year so the appetite for the printed product is still huge. But what it has done has vastly improved the content and user experience.

A New Kind of Catalog: The 2013 IKEA Catalog App Preview