IKEA believes that design should be for all – "democratic design" they call it. Demonstrated by the plethora of showrooms housing thousands of different items, there's something to everyone's liking along IKEA's walkway. Yet, customers have to wait until they get home and unwrap their flat packs to truly become part of the IKEA experience.

IKEA was looking for a digital solution, adapting this philosophy and offering costumers a new experience in-store.

The Virtual Home Experience lies at the center of IKEA's home furnishing hub – a playful interior lab where IKEA focuses on inspiring and co-creation with its customers. The VR experience works like a creative primer by inviting them to visualize different combinations. It sets customers free to think beyond the given things, making the most out of their visit to the hub and helping them truly find their very own room for life.

The application provides an immersive and emotional product experience that revolutionizes the way customers engage in interior decoration. After slipping into IKEA's virtual showroom, visitors are able to explore and configure furniture items and their environmental context in real-time. In the blink of an eye, they can try different fabrics, swap the wall color and even change the time of day to see their combinations in a different light. It empowers the visitor to visualize their own taste, inspire and expand their mind with new ideas.

As the first public VR installation of its kind, various aspects of the application and the hub had to be rethought to make the Oculus Rift ready for unattended use at a store that welcomes thousands of people a day. Special attention was given to anything, from easy on-boarding, health notifications to foolproof interactions and smooth cable management. Installed as a prototype in Germany's most vibrant city, Berlin, IKEA and Demodern source learnings for further development on a daily basis – using application analytics as well as a broad scale of qualitative user feedback given directly at the point-of-sale.