But hold onto your hats folks, Lowe’s has a solution for you. The home improvement giant is looking to tap into virtual reality in order to deliver the ultimate home improvement training. The company is launching a virtual reality tutorial that will help homeowners master the skills needed for home improvement projects. This is just the first pilot. The company plans to create more tutorials and roll them out in different locations across the country. The first lessons will be on how to tile a bathroom and Lowe’s customers at the Massachusetts stores will be given first dibs on this exciting innovation.
So, how will this work anyway? The customer will visit the store first and they will be given a VR headset to put on. They will then be put in a room where they will use the HTC Vive controller to simulate mixing of mortar and also placing the tile. This is a simple tutorial but depending on its success, Lowe’s will launch more advanced tutorials in some of its stores. The aim is to help homeowners with the small details that make home improvement projects a success. It’s not really a suggestion that you are incapable of installing tiles. The aim is to ensure that you are able to install them as perfectly as possible.
According to Lowe’s Innovation Labs director Kyle Nel, the virtual reality training offers major benefits. The immersive world helps the learners to internalize skills faster compared to normal hands-on training. In addition to this, unlike the normal in-store lessons that were often inefficient and inconvenient for both the customers and the stores, the VR classes are available anytime, require minimum supervision, and the customer can step in and get the training anytime. Nel said that the VR was meant to offer a simpler training solution that can be rolled out in many locations across the US and Canada.
Lowe’s says that the total number of millennials who are forgoing home improvement is growing. This is because many of them do not have enough confidence in home improvement and do not feel they are capable of doing a good job. However, it’s all about training and Lowe’s feels that adding a virtual reality element in the whole process will help attract people in this age bracket. In the long run, the program will not just help to equip different people with home improvement skills but it will also serve as a catalyst to motivate young people who have not engaged in home improvement projects before to do so.
Lowe’s added that the VR system will also help monitor customers as they engage in various training sessions and pick out areas where they are stuck or areas they are having troubles with. The trainers will then focus efforts on those areas in order to deliver a wholesome training experience. It is definitely a great idea and the company is sure it will serve its goal once it fully rolls out countrywide.