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Furniture in the heart of the user experience
Can you blend timeless beauty and historic furniture craftsmanship with new digital technologies? By designing a user-centric product experience, sales representatives and customers now have the power to co-craft the perfect piece of furniture in the new product configurator from Carl Hansen & Søn.
Carl Hansen & Søn's main goal is to gather the most iconic modern furniture designs under one roof. Photo: carlhansen.com
Iconic design for more than 100 years
Carl Hansen & Søn is a family-owned Danish design company, now in its third generation, who skillfully balances preserving Danish design classics with modern collaborations. As the world's largest manufacturer of Hans J. Wegner's designs, they also craft works by iconic designers like Arne Jacobsen, Børge Mogensen, and others.
Designing the perfect piece of furniture, together
The customer user journey for buying a piece of furniture from Carl Hansen & Søn is long and well-researched, often spanning 3-12 months from initial consideration to purchase. These products are lifetime investments, meant to be owned for generations rather than resold. Physical stores play a vital role in this journey, with most customers visiting a store before buying.
Given the complexity of material choices, the guidance of a sales representative is crucial. To enhance this process, we have designed a product configurator for Flagship Store Managers. This tool will aid their customer interactions and streamline the buying decision, making it seamless.
The color palette is inspired by nature and adds to the creation of a living, sophisticated identity. Photo: carlhansen.com
Co-crafted timeless design
Outstanding craftsmanship and timeless design serves as the cornerstones of Carl Hansen & Søn’s legacy. That’s been our guiding light in the design of the digital product configurator, which offers a seamless interactive experience that empowers both sales managers and customers to co-craft the perfect piece of furniture.
In the configurator, guidance is honest and functionality aesthetically pleasing and easy accessible, keeping the furniture at the heart of the user experience. The customers’ personal needs are alpha omega and the configurator lets them customise their desired piece of furniture exactly to them.
New navigation and guidance UI components have been added to ensure functionality and driving user action forward. Photo: carlhansen.com
Tablet-first approach
Sales representatives explained that they move around in the store when advising the customer. Typically, the conversation happens next to the piece of furniture in question. They go to the register only when it’s time to fill out the order.
Several customers explained how they preferred to be next to the actual piece of furniture during the process of deciding. Therefore, our design is matched to tablets by default, as sales representatives can move around with it.
It can be a maze selecting materials for a piece of furniture. The product configurator eases and simplifies that making choice manageable. Photo: carlhansen.com
New components
The design is created to highlight the craftsmanship and details for the furniture with easy and accessible navigation, guidance and comparison enablement. UI components in the product configurator are primarily based on carlhansen.com ensuring a consistent experience across platforms
However, new navigation and guidance components have been added to ensure users are able to perform their desired task: customising and selecting different materials for their favourite furniture.
The impact of an enhanced customer journey
For now, the product configurator has been put to use by in-store Flagship Sales Managers. However, Carl Hansen & Søn are planning to integrate it into their commerce platform on their website, allowing users to start their customer user journey on their own.
Get in touch
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Niels Kristian Christensen
Business Development Director