The Psychology of Visualization

Commentary by: Steve Hanson, President and CEO

Visualize yourself on a quiet beach. The sand is warm beneath your body, the sun shines down and you can hear the ocean waves gently lapping the shoreline. It's easy to imagine, isn't it? Of course it is. Maybe you've been to such a beach, or saw something similar in a movie. Regardless, this is a scene that draws upon prior experiences.

Now, open any design magazine and find an advertisement for a couch. Try to visualize it in your own living room. It's not as easy as visualizing that tropical beach. How could it be? The photo you are looking at bears no resemblance to your actual living room. The walls are probably a different color, the floor covering is not anywhere close to what you have, and the décor is a million miles away from anything you'd actually have in your own home.

Unfortunately, though, this scenario is what we're expected to do every time we go shopping at a furniture store, paint store, carpet store, and so on. We are shown a piece of furniture (or carpet sample, or paint swatch) in an abstract setting with no relation to our own living arrangements, and are expected to somehow know that it will work in our house. Psychologically, it just doesn't make sense.

You may think I'm about to say that the solution is visualization technology. It's not, though. The solution is understanding the psychology of consumer behavior well enough to integrate the appropriate technologies, thus creating the experience needed.

Let's go back to the furniture example. Many of you remember the now-defunct e-commerce site, furniture.com. This online furniture store had a great selection of furniture, and boasted a room planner to help users arrange their rooms and decide what furniture they wanted. Herein lies the problem (and this was not furniture.com's only problem - many factors contributed to their eventual demise). The planner they used was top down. Users could configure a room to match their own room's dimensions, and then drag and drop furniture items into that room to determine the best arrangement. It was a great technology. It was a wonderful and fun way to arrange rooms. But, and this is a big but, it didn't really empower the consumer to visualize what that couch would look like in their particular room.

A room is more than shapes and configurations. It is colors and textures as well. What if, after arranging the room, users could see this same arrangement photo-realistically? This would then allow them to place in their actual paint color (or something very close), and their actual floor covering. This would get them that much closer to the empowerment needed to make a decision. Why? It takes into account the importance of anchor points. Anchor points are those items in the room (or home exterior) that are not going to change. Though a consumer is purchasing a couch, he might not necessarily be changing his wall color. Perhaps his living room is painted a lovely shade of brick red. A brick red wall, then, is one of this consumer's anchor points, and allows him to better visualize a piece of furniture in his own home. This is what we mean when we tout the psychology of visualization.

It is understanding all of the psychological factors that go into a decision. It is understanding that a particular technology is not a panacea. The panacea is having the right tool, at the right time, with the right user interface to make it all come together.

When this happens, the end result is an empowered consumer with extreme brand loyalty. This becomes especially important when your consumers are at a showroom or retailer where they are surrounded by competing brands. In today's competitive retail world, it is important to get every advantage possible. The right mix of technologies can help you do so.