You know what it’s like to stand there, and stand there, and stand there waiting for someone to come by and open the dressing room door, or perhaps you just don’t feel like taking something off to try on one lousy blouse…
That’s where Swivel, the virtual dressing room, could save you a whole lot of aggravation.
Swivel was demo’d this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. FaceCake Marketing Technologies, which developed the snazzy proprietary software is hoping that it will be used by virtual as well as mall-based retailers. Swivel makes good use of motion-sensoring technology in webcams and Microsoft Kinect to scan your body and then fit you into the items you’d like to try on.
Here’s a screen shot from the Los Angeles Times video of how Swivel works:
Honestly, if I happen to be in a store, I’d rather just buy something and then return it if it doesn’t fit. However, I can see this as a boon to online retailers. I will often not buy from online retailers if I am not sure of their sizes. Size charts help but sometimes there are multiple manufacturers sold by one online retailer. Sometimes they have manufacturer/designer specific charts and sometimes they don’t. Product reviews help (esp. when they note if an item fits too small or too large.) To have the addition of a visualization before ordering an item could certainly save a whole lot of return troubles!
Note: I believe I saw Swivel, as well as some other and quite different virtual try-on software at the Fashion 140 conference in New York City last spring.
I think that’s a really interesting idea, many of us like you mentioned will just buy stuff and return if we have to especially if the store is very busy or we pretty much know how something will fit/look but this tool adds a little security I suppose as well as fun and saving time. We’d have to see how accurate it is on demonstrating how items will fit different body shape though.