Understanding how consumers observe and make purchase decisions within a retail context is now both accessible and efficient through eye tracking. Although a physical store provides the most realistic context, a virtual store could create a more economical, cost effective, and customizable solutions for measuring consumer visual attention from packaging design aesthetics.
Graduate Thesis | VR | 3D Design | Eye Tracking
Photoshop
Premiere Pro
3dsMAX
ArtiosCAD
Oculus VR
Over the past decade, eye tracking has evolved as a reliable tool in the packaging industry to help determine the overall effectiveness of a product or package in retail. Understanding what people look at with certain forms of packages can be an increasingly useful tool for designers and brand owners alike. But what if we could combine this technology with VR to simulate real-world shopping?
Traditionally, these experiments are conducted in a retail environment to simulate the atmosphere of a real shopping store. So we built a fake corner store and then replicated it using 3D software + Unity to test if consumers can shop naturally in a digital world. The shopping participants were given a grocery list where they would go shop for particular goods, wearing eye tracking glasses in the physical world and a modified VR setup in the virtual world.
The overall experiment proved to be limited by the technology at the time. Integrating eye tracking into the VR headset proved to be difficult and not always accurate. The controls used to navigate the virtual world also detracted from the immersive experience of being in the store. So as technology improves, VR + Eye tracking can prove to be a feasible method for immersing consumers into a digital shopping experience.
While working for Sonoco Packaging, I helped develop a capability that allowed customers to view their packaging projects using VR/AR on their phone. This allowed them to provide better feedback on various project stages, and approvals without creating physical prototypes.
UI Design | 3D Modeling | AR/VR
Sketch
3dsMAX
Oculus
Unity
CPG customers were able to expedite the concept to design phase of their projects by viewing high definition renderings of their packages. This resulted in an overall gain in project efficiency and success due to streamlining the feedback loop to get insights faster.