The future of online shopping

Monday 17 December 2012

Now internet clothes shopping promises to be less of a nightmare at Christmas...

More clothes will be brought online this year than ever before, creating thousands of dilemmas for those receiving such presents. Do you return that lovely bright red jumper with huge snowflakes and reindeers and pretend it was the wrong size or do you grin and bear it?

Another problem is that it’s the wrong size, not that you ordered the wrong size but it just doesn’t fit. Well, in the future these grumbles, so often a part of the festive season, will be banished to Christmas Past. New research at the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing means that soon you will be able to scan in your vital statistics using a webcam or a smartphone so the perfect fit will always be guaranteed. Your loved ones or not so loved ones will have no excuse for getting you that XXXL size multi-coloured tank top when you are really as thin as a rake.

Groundbreaking web-based system

The groundbreaking web-based system takes unprecedentedly detailed measurements of the body. The software is currently being developed by computer vision experts at the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing in collaboration with staff at the London College of Fashion, body-mapping specialists Bodymetrics and digital creative agency, Guided. The shopper would simply download software which, in conjunction with their webcam or smartphone, works like a ‘virtual’ tape measure, taking accurate waist, hip, chest and other measurements and advising the user on which size garment to buy whenever they visit the website of a participating retailer. Professor Adrian Hilton, Director CVSSP, says: “It’s unrealistic to expect online clothes shoppers to have the time or inclination to take a series of highly accurate body measurements of themselves. The new system makes it all very easy.” Taking multiple measurements of the body quickly, easily and accurately, the system aims to ensure the best possible fit and so save retailers and shoppers millions of pounds a year in return postage costs, as well as eliminating the hassle involved in sending back clothes that are the wrong size or fit. Body scanning is already starting to make a mark in the clothing retail sector. But because the new system takes measurements at a number of different points on the body and combines these with a person’s overall proportions to build up a detailed 3D image, it offers much greater precision than anything else available in-store or online. Moreover, most online shoppers currently buy clothes simply on the basis of waist size, for instance, or small/medium/large categorisation, whose accuracy is inevitably limited and often depends on the shopper’s subjective perception of their own body size.

Confidential

The new system avoids these problems. Once they find the item they are interested in, the shopper simply clicks their mouse to activate the software, stands in front of their webcam or smartphone in their underwear, takes a photo, types in their height and lets the software do the rest. The photo remains entirely confidential and is not transmitted over the internet in any way. The height measurement gives the software the starting point for ascertaining the body size of the shopper.

Detailed information

To inform customers, a logo or and possibly a pop-up on the computer screen would appear on the websites of participating retailers. As slight variations often exist in the proportions of clothes with the same label size but produced by different manufacturers, retailers would also supply detailed information about the size of all their individual garments. The software would take this into account when recommending the size of a particular item for a particular shopper.