Designing effective augmented reality platforms to enhance the consumer shopping experiences

The fashion retail industry faces immense changes in the rapid growth in e-Commerce recently, retailers worry about the future of traditional shopping. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technology has the potential to drive retailers’ efficiency and serve consumers to new heights. However, VR/AR shopping is a new domain in which the shopper’s behaviour is not fully formed yet. Successful commercialisation remains elusive due to the lack of Human Factors theory to direct the interaction design process. This PhD focused on consumers and retailers by exploring their desires and the value that AR/VR can offer to them. The findings are then integrated into designing the future fashion retail environment. Figure 0 1 shows the thesis’s structure related to the research questions.

The scoping study (chapter 4) investigated the format of v-Commerce experience consumers best respond to. Through interviewing consumers and VR developers, I found VR may not have a powerful impact on the retail industry at the current stage owing to low technology acceptance and technical limitations. Under the impact of COVID-19, there has been a significant drop in the number of people going to the high street as they shop online instead. To attract consumers back to physical stores, study two carried out three co-design workshops to evaluate current shopping modes (Chapter 6) and designed two AR prototypes (AR Branded App and AR Magic Mirror) through UX flow to create a better shopping experience (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 ran 42 experience prototype experiment sessions in a ‘mock-shop’ to test the prototypes, demonstrating AR can be the value in enjoyment to make the shopping experience more fun. To testify the implication of AR prototypes, study three (Chapter 9) interviewed retail staff from both high-street and luxury markets and AR/UX designers. The results showed that the fashion retail market is ill-prepared to use AR. AR should prioritise the functional purpose but animate AR in an exciting way in a high-street store, enabling consumers to obtain an efficient and enjoyable shopping experience. AR can help luxury brands tell a hedonic story allowing the consumers to engage with the story and save cost to physically create the story flow. 

In understanding the outcomes of these studies, the thesis discusses the studies’ results to answer each research question (Chapter 10). Designing a v-Commerce platform should focus on convenience, credibility, social dimension, and incredible content design. AR can offer a better in-store experience by highlighting usefulness, enjoyment, safety, and efficiency. High-street fashion retailers are recommended to develop AR App before Magic Mirror that designs functional features for the AR in-store application. While luxury retailers should focus on creating hedonic value and provide a personalised experience. In conclusion, implications, a specific design guideline, future vision and avenues for further work are highlighted (Chapter 11).