What prompted the idea behind Vitra’s ‘Office Chair Finder’?

Vitra: We wanted to offer a better online experience to consumers by allowing them to dynamically compare the chairs and configure them according to their specific needs. Despite being a very recognisable brand, we needed some external guidance to help us properly showcase our beautiful products in the digital realm. With so many technical differences and configurations, we set out to build a meaningful and interactive digital assistant that would guide the user through all of these categories and filters.

Build in Amsterdam: With the finder initiative, Vitra took one of their key product categories – the office chairs – and aimed to offer a tool where complex specifications and ergonomics are simplified enough and made applicable to an end user. All in all, this way of thinking turned out very successful so the concept was extended to other product categories, such as the ‘Lounge Chair Finder’, ‘Gift Finder’, and others to come.

What was the purpose of the finder?

Build in Amsterdam: For the Office Chair Finder and Lounge Chair Finder, we were assigned by Vitra to build the perfect office chair finder from the ground up. The finder was briefed to be a digital tool, or assistant, centred around finding the perfect office chair to suit your needs. It is crucial, for that purpose, that the finder asks users only the right and most relevant questions, i.e, ‘Sitting time’, or ‘Your height’. Questions that you would be asked by the most knowledgeable Vitra staff in their stores.
The other side of it was to showcase Vitra’s rich history and high level of expertise in a visually appealing way and introduce it to a multitude of on- and offline brand touchpoints.

The Gift Finder was initiated as a tool to help Vitra gather its enormous portfolio of accessories, storage items and small seaters & tables, and help them guide users – in a very visual and playful way – to narrow down their gift list by carefully selecting (and easy-to-understand) filtering options.

Vitra: First and foremost, we wanted people to use it (laughs)! We conceived the tool as a framework, something that evolves and can be adapted in the future. We were specific about not wanting the typical filters you see in most digital stores but rather wanted to see if we could really cater to the user’s specific needs. By marrying the visually attractive content that already exists with a tangible and flexible tool, Build in Amsterdam managed to create a great experience. We’re launching a new office chair this year and the fact that we’ll be able to input that into the finder straight away is precisely what makes it great.

How was the collaboration between Vitra and Build in Amsterdam?

Vitra: From a collaboration perspective, it was quite a unique approach because BIA was able to offer everything in-house, from design to front-end and back-end development. Talking to developers directly and having them at the table meant they were able to show their own work and it really made for a holistic process. You often can lose a lot of traction and speed going back and forth, so this way of working was highly appreciated as we had a comprehensive overview of the project at all times. After this positive experience, I see this as a model for how good work should be carried out and now try to apply this approach in other projects as well.

How did you approach the development process?

Build in Amsterdam: Going into the Gift Finder we knew we’d need to support 200+ items on the grid. This presented a unique challenge compared to the Chair Finder, as the layout had to be as flexible as possible. To tackle this, we started the process with prototypes. Not only did it help make sure we could A) support as many items and B) know the vast number of items would be performant and accessible, but C) it actually influenced the design approach too. By prototyping alongside design, we were able to bounce ideas off each other and eventually landed where we did. For example, one of the biggest things we pushed towards during prototypes was a completely fluid and playful experience without modals, popups or different pages. 

The Vitra finders are built using a technology stack that is common for our projects - Next.js, Storyblok, and framer-motion. However, the Gift Finder had an additional feature in the form of a GUI system, which allowed for real-time modifications to the app. This added flexibility really helped us nail animations of the tool.