Interior Designing is a visual form of art that can be very subjective. When designing, a designer must cater to every need of their client while paying attention to the minutest details. The subjectivity of the design arises from the intrinsic factors such as age, gender, beliefs, socio-economic background and so on of a client as well as extrinsic factors such as the people they interact with, the locality they live in and so on. And even if, the interior designer does meet every expectation of the client, there is an added pressure that the visualised design must translate to the site itself.

Today to assist interior designers there are various tools used in practice. Interior designers can create 2-D layouts and 3-D renders before implementing the designs on the site. Designs can vary from modular, where the home has more of mainstream furniture and fittings, to intricate where the design consists of minute details in every aspect of the development.

With this, we now shift to the tool of discussion: “Houzz Pro: Life-Sized Walkthroughs”.

Houzz, founded in 2009 and located in Palo Alto California, is an all-in-one solution for both individuals interested to design their homes as well as professionals from the industry. Their offerings range from providing design inspirations, home products like furniture, to connecting individuals with professionals. They also offer Houzz Pro for industry professionals with designing tools along with CRM capabilities. For the purpose of this critique we will analyse the Augmented Reality offering Houzz Pro called “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”.

Traditionally, in a home designing process, first comes a 2-D top view layout which is used as the floor plan. This floor plan is to place all the furniture and fittings in the house with their respective dimensions to optimise utility and maintain aesthetics. Once this is done, the next step is to create a 3-D image render of the house which gives more detail on how the rooms would exactly look like. This image is then used as a reference point for updates, modifications and implementation. And while these images are very useful and have a significant advantage over the 2-D layouts, the one significant drawback of these images is that they still cannot perfectly replicate how these designs would look in the real-world.

The Houzz Pro application overcomes this drawback of 3-D rendered images, by using Augmented Reality to place the designs in the real world for more accurate visualisations. Below is a short demo from Houzz about the AR tool called “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”, released on March 29th, 2022:

There is a short tutorial on how the AR feature for this app can be used:

From the previous video we see that for the feature to be used, we need to first have the 3-D model of the house we want to view in Houzz Pro. Here is a video of how a 3-D Floor Model is built in Houzz Pro:

All the three the videos show how the Houzz Pro’s Life-Sized Walkthroughs Feature can be implemented.

Additional Resource: Best Practices for Houzz Pro’s Life-Sized Walkthroughs Feature

These offerings are a new step in the process of interior designing. Interior designing has been supported by many technological advancements like modelling and rendering but these advancements are in the number of features provided by the application and the performance of the application. The Houzz Pro “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” is not an advancement but an innovation which uses existing AR technologies and repurposes it for an entirely new use-case.

In my opinion, for an application to be a good use of a technology, it must add value to its users and be accessible to a large set of users. Both are true in the case of Houzz Pro “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”. The application gives its users more information about the design by replicating it in the real world, thus bringing the imaginations to life (albeit virtual). This enables better understanding of the design as well as virtual demonstration of what the space would look like. The “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” is a use-case which can affect an entire industry rather than a small subset of users. There are multiple sets of users (which are discussed in the next section) who can benefit from using the application, and the benefits of using the application can be both tangible and intangible. The tool can also be a way to make money for some sets of its users, while a way to save money for some other sets of its users.

While the AR technology has existed in different forms, this particular use-case is important as it could be a new step or replace an entire step in the designing process.

The intended users for this can be classified into the following categories:

1. Interior Designers: For an interior designer the tool can be used for ideating, presenting and in some cases, marketing their ideas as well. The tool allows interior designers to work upon their designs in the real-world, to gain feedback and to rework on them before implementing them on the site. The tool also allows the interior designer to convince their client by translating their vision in the real-world. Interior designers can simply use the “3-D Floor Planner” and then import their floor plans into the “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” to use the AR features.
2. Homeowners (Clients): Homeowners can ideate with their interior designer to develop the design of their living space when developing the floor plans, once this floor plan is developed, they too can use the AR feature. Using this AR feature, they understand whether the design ideas developed are aligning with their vision. While Homeowners are intended users, their involvement is only restricted to the viewing of the AR based layouts, they cannot develop the layouts themselves as this is restricted to only “Pro” (implying professional) users. For Homeowners, Houzz (not Houzz Pro) has other AR offerings which are out of the scope of our discussion.
3. Builders and Real Estate Agents: While one could say this category could be combined with Interior Designer to be called “Professionals”, the reason they are different is because of the purpose and type of outcomes expected using the tool. While interior designers have a more personalised approach for their implementations of designs and layouts, builders and real estate agents need to focus on demonstrating whether the living space can meet certain criteria. For this category, the tool is majorly for marketing of the living space as it helps visualise how amenities could be fit in the space, rather than catering to the individual needs of their client.
4. Site workers: While this category may not be the target set for the application, it could be used by site workers for the purposes of progress mapping and to visualise the design expectations of the interior designer and the homeowner.

1. Adds Dimensions to Information: Simple 3-D renders still have a 2-D representation, i.e. it can only be viewed on a digital screen or a printout. With “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”, users can experience the design of the house in an immersive manner, by viewing an Augmented version of the real-world.
2. Reduced Time for Designing: The designing process is cyclical in nature. The cycles occur due to feedback moving between designers and homeowners. Viewing the “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” allows Homeowners to give more accurate feedback about the designs, reducing time.
3. Increased confidence: When clients can see the design in the real-world, they can make design decisions more confidently as compared to 3-D renders. The tool allows clients to understand the dimensions and proportions of furniture and fitting, answering questions of space utility and space optimisation.
4. Beneficial for Modular Design: When design is more modular, the application is very useful when designs are modular as details are not important, but the placement is, which the tool highlights very well.
5. Design can be overlaid: A significant advantage of the tool is that it does not need an empty room for the design to be visible. In a scenario of remodelling, the tool can overlay the design over the current environment, allowing homeowners to see new designs of the house without the need to clear the house of its existing design and furniture.
6. Easy to use: To access the AR tool, one needs to install the mobile application and use the phone screen to access the designs, instead of specialised equipment like VR headsets or AR eyewear. The Houzz Pro is available on the Apple App Store and the Houzz Pro app is available on the Google Play store.
7. Marketing Tool: Technology act as a differentiator between competitors. By offering this tool, interior designers and builders can convert potential clients generating higher revenue.

1. Costly: The tool comes as a part of the Houzz Pro subscription. The monthly cost of the is significantly high, making it unusable by small interior designers or firms. The cost of the tool may outweigh its benefits in some cases where users are satisfied by 3-D renders itself.
2. Limited access: To support this, we can compare this application with Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go is an application that can be accessed by all individuals as longs as they have the appropriate permissions. Homeowners still need the involvement of interior designers to use the “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”.
3. Skillset: To develop these 3-D models, the skillset requires the understanding of how to develop 3-D floor plans. Intuitively, the access to development tools to use the feature is only provided to “Professionals” and not to individual homeowners.
4. Colours and Textures: As we saw in the third video, to use “Life-Sized Walkthroughs”, the plans need to be created in the 3-D Floor Planner. While the 3-D Floor Planner has options for furniture and fittings to be placed in the design, they are highly restricted to the options available within the Houzz application and models from other application like SketchUp cannot be used. The options for colour and textures are limited and not as extensive such as the ones which are rendered by interior designers today.
5. Sensitive to changes: The “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” feature is highly sensitive to changes and cannot process changes dynamically. If the homeowner or the interior designer decide they need to make a change, the interior designer needs to go back to the 3-D Floor Plan, make modifications and only then can it be seen in the “Life-Sized Walkthroughs” again.

1. Houzz Pro: Life-Sized Walkthroughs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqDMFzS7c1M
2. How to Use the Houzz Pro Life-Sized Walkthrough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLBcGYLiBzs
3. How to Make a 3D Floor Plan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F043q8dU2TY
4. Houzz Pro: Business Management (Apple App Store) - https://apps.apple.com/app/id1488002482
5. Houzz Pro (Google Play Store) - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.houzz.pro&pli=1