Dyson has opened a virtual reality store to allow customers to try out its products before choosing to buy them.
The new Dyson Demo VR experience, accessible via virtual reality headsets, sees users able to examine and test virtual versions of the firm’s hair Corrale straighteners, Supersonic hairdryer or Airwrap styler on strands of virtual hair to see how they work.
It has been designed to mirror similar physical demo experiences that are available in Dyson’s bricks and mortar stores around the world and draws on the technology Dyson engineers use in the company’s labs to simulate and test new prototypes.
The new experience will launch on the Oculus virtual reality store on November 19th and is expected to expand to include other Dyson products in the future.
The virtual space, which is also being made available on the tech firm’s website, allows visitors to see how the products were built and how they work through visual animations and short films starring Dyson engineers.
“Dyson Demo VR means that we can now bring our technologies to life for our customers in ways that were previously beyond imagination,” Dyson e-commerce director, Sean Newmarch, said.
“Using the same technologies and tools used within our labs, we can explain better how Dyson machines work and why they make a difference. All of this can be done using our actual design data. We can show people a virtual product operating in a virtual room but using the actual product software – it doesn’t get much more realistic than that.”
“As engineers we are concerned with improving things and that includes how people understand our products,” founder and chief engineer Sir James Dyson said.
“We have been harnessing powerful virtual reality technologies to engineer new products in our labs for many years, now we are applying those same technologies to re-invent how people explore our products.
“Our customers increasingly want to buy directly from us, which makes sense, because we created the technology, and we are best placed to look after them. We are also trying new ways to explain our technologies through our hair salons, testing zones in-store, online live streams, 1:1 live video.”
