Technology is revolutionizing fitting rooms

By Mercy Adhiambo Oginga

Technology is reinventing the fitting room experience. Ranging from RFID tags to artificial intelligence to augmented reality, fitting rooms are being redefined. The rise of e-commerce and digital shopping over the last twenty years has seen physical retail stores sell less items than they did before. 

Today, e-commerce accounts for at least 13% in retail sales. Slick online retailers utilize social media culture and influencer to drive sales while others such as Amazon provide ultra-convenience. 

Traditional stores have responded to the threat with optimized physical assets advantages and designing thoughtful fitting rooms for a positive shopping experience. 

Fitting room innovations over the last ten years range from responsive and high-tech solutions to low-tech techniques founded on clever designs. Most losses in fashion retail stores occur in changing rooms, atop being an area of high staffing cost. 

On the other hand, e-commerce stores experience 25% returns of purchased items with 70% resulting from wrong dress sizes. This explains the essence of a tech-savvy fitting room in solving the issues. 

Here’s how technology has revolutionized fitting rooms over the last decade and continues to do so.

The Different Technologies Redefining Fitting Rooms

Mannequins are typical of virtual fitting rooms to show shoppers how different dress sizes fit their body shape. All you have to do is enter basic measurements and a mannequin adjusts to fit the dimensions. 

You then dress the mannequin with various outfits of different sizes to see how they fit before you can make a purchase. The different fitting room technologies used to adopt the solution include the following:

• 3D Fitting Rooms

3-dimensional images are generated using computers to deliver virtual-world-computer-games-like experience. Customers’ body measurements are used to generate a virtual mannequin or avatar, including information on the shape of your body.

The avatar created may personalize a customer’s skin tone, race or pre-determined hairstyles. An image of your face can also be uploaded into the system to help with avatar creation. The avatar helps customers see how they’ll look in any given outfit, accessories or any other fashion products on sale.

Some 3D fitting room systems allow customers to try different items simultaneously, and compare the different outfits, side-by-side.

• Body Scanners

Scanning technology include phone cameras, webcams and Microsoft Kinect device, or those designed to use complex technology and requires you to move to the scanner for it to work. 

The first set of scanners require that shoppers stand at a predetermined distance from the phone or web camera while holding an object for use as a point of size reference.

Large department stores and shopping malls use multiple Kinect sensors in arrays or complex scanners designed to use millimeter wave-detector technology or laser. 

However, they’re too bulky and costly for smaller fashion stores. You must move to the location of the scanners to use them and information collected can also be used in online stores.

• 3D Simulation

Photo-correct and 3D solutions are used in real 3D simulation fitting rooms. The solutions use your basic body measurements and photo to create a 3D mannequin for visualization of the clothes or fashion items you pick from a store to try out.

For every measurements entered into the system, suggestions are made for more suitable sizes. You can select other sizes to find a perfect fit in your chosen outfits.

• 3D Model of a Customer

With this solution, you can develop a 3D avatar of you using the information you’ve got of yourself, biometric information or those obtained from the scanning devices.

A shopper’s facial image is used to create the avatar. The 3D avatar then displays your chosen clothes to see how you’d look in them for a personalized experience. 

• Augmented Reality

A shopper’s live video feed features superimposed 3D model or image of an outfit or accessory in augmented reality implemented in virtual fitting rooms. The superimposed image is responsible for tracking your movement to make it seems as if you’re wearing the virtual outfit or accessory in the video.

A smartphone camera, a desktop webcam, or a 3D camera like Kinect are often used in augmented virtual reality changing rooms. For instance, a 3D camera can be used to manipulate the parts of an accessory or outfit visible in display. 

• Photo-Correct Digital Fitting Room

Dress-up mannequins and real models converge to create this tech solution in fitting rooms. Shape-shifting mannequin robots are used to create images and try out outfits instead of models with similar body size and shape as customers. 

Mannequins are computer controlled to quickly change in body sizes and shapes to fit different outfit sizes for photography. The created images are then stored in databases, including the generated image measurements. 

The mannequins are then altered from images to replace virtual avatars to reflect the particular fashion brand in question. Upon entering your measurements into the systems, the avatar mannequin image stored in the database is retrieved for display.

• Other Technologies

Other technologies used in fitting rooms include videos of real models trying out different sizes of an outfit for interactive manipulation and realistic views of how you’d look in the garments.

Clothes and accessories are also photographed on real-life mannequins for editing and replacement. You can drag and drop clothes on the virtual mannequin for a mix and match look. 

This solution is a perfect replacement for real models to reduce related costs. It also makes it easy standardize the process of photography. 

Conclusion

Smart mirrors, integration of a social component and thoughtful designs in modern fitting rooms are also geared towards delivering unique and memorable shopping experiences. 

Technology is advancing at a fast rate, explaining the essence of investing in virtual fitting rooms. The best technology for smart fitting rooms is yet to be known. However, it takes marketing, financial investment, and user experience to become a winner in adopting technology in smart changing rooms.

The best technology for fitting rooms is relative and thus fashion stores must make independent decisions on what suits them best. Only value retailers and discounters may be exempted from adopting the technologies.

Africa Global News Publication