Raving Reviews of My Virtual Model

Did you ever try Google Books? A search for "My Virtual Model" returns some 150 citations. I selected these four recent books which look pretty interesting.

Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers, by Bridget Brennan, Crown Business, 2009

"The website Sears.com does the zoom function one better through its "My Virtual Model" feature. The site allows shoppers to input their height, weight, and personal characteristics--even a photo of themselves--to create their own animated online model to try on clothing. It also offers the same feature for home fashions section of the site, enabling shoppers to click and paste everything from furniture to paint colors in images of rooms. It's brilliant and totally unexpected."

Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions, by Bill Scott, Theresa Neil, O'Reilly Media, 2009

"Showing a close-up of a camera on an electronics site is a common technique. But what sets a Live Preview apart from a simple preview is its interactive nature.

Lands' End uses a tool called My Virtual Model to bring Live Previews to clothes shopping. It is based on the premise that if you can show what the clothes will look like on the shoppers, they will be happier with their purchases. While virtual models can only come so close to reality, users can personalize the model with their height, weight, body shape, and so on. Then when they select shirts, pants, and shoes, their virtual model will appear dressed with the items."

Electronic Commerce, by Gary Schneider, Course Technology, 2008

"About 15 percent of visitors to the site use the virtual model and, on average, dress the model 40 times during a visit. Lands' End has found that the dollar amount of orders placed by customers who use the virtual model is about 10 percent larger than other orders. The Canadian company that developed this Web site feature, My Virtual Model, has sold the technology to a number of other clothing retailers."

Chocolates on the pillow aren't enough: reinventing the customer experience, by Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber, Wiley, 2007

"To be effective, technology must be subservient to human ends. The software and web site features used by Lands' End to develop custom clothing designs look simple and may even seem a little hokey. (Does it really matter that My Virtual Model has hair the same length, color, and curliness as mine?) But they help customers take psychological ownership of their clothes even before they order them, providing a sense of figurative comfort that matches the literal comfort we enjoy in well-fitting clothes."