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."

Bing and My Virtual Model Visual Search

Bing Visual Search is making the news! For us at MVM, seeing the words "Visual Search" marketed by Microsoft means that the idea is catching on. Bing tells everyone what My Virtual Model believes since a long time. Searching is visual, like in "looking for".

People asked us what's the difference between Bing and My Virtual Model Visual Search. At this time, it’s important to note that differences may be less relevant than goals and objectives.

My Virtual Model devoted 10 years of research in online fashion marketing and we draw some interesting conclusions about visual search. Like text-based search, a visual search solution must provide a way to enter queries and do something with the results. What really makes them two separate engines, though, is that people don't expect visual search to yield the same thing as keyword search engines. If they were the same, why switch to the new gizmo?

Text-based search can easily find pictures using keywords. Visual search uses key images to find matching attributes. The key image concept is what makes MVM Visual Search so easy to use. It fills the gap between experts and novices, following the WYSIWYG rule. To use My Virtual Model Visual Search, people do not have to know about keywords and attributes. They just pick and choose what they like to see.

For text-based search, it is assumed that people know how to read and write, so that's probably what they want to do with the results. If they are searching for an image, they want to see it, right? Wrong. There's a second part to this story.

Delivering pictures to users is not enough. People ought to be able to do things with them. A true visual search solution must provide a graphic interface to use the results. Basic image search would only display results on web pages and provide links to follow. Visual Search extends from 2D to 3D space where users can organize things visually and see how they fit together. Like words, foods or clothes, images take new flavors from their neighbors. Mixing and matching them while searching for the next missing thing is what makes MVM Visual Search a complete user experience.

While developing our 3D shopping engine for apparel retailers, My Virtual Model came across the issue of visual search quite naturally. But rather than adding "visual" in front of "search", we found ourselves with an overwhelming wealth of "visuals" in need of a state-of-the-art "search". Fortunately, MVM staff comprises a few fashion experts and patternmakers mastering the field. They provided the knowledge necessary to build the MVM Key Image Pictionary.

Then the mix-and-match issue came up: how to allow 2D pictures to share the same 3D space as My Virtual Model. And there, we were fortunate again to borrow our solution from Louise Guay's seminal Ph.D. thesis, "The Pocket Museum" (1986) where she described the multimedia experience as collage in a social communication environment. I think people should know how fortunate we are.

Back to Microsoft and Bing. It becomes obvious now why traditional search engines have so much trouble delivering a great shopping experience to users. Don't take me wrong, this situation may change very soon. Search engines are focusing on advertising revenues, leaving the shopping experience to retailers. In the not so far future, successful online retailers will be focusing more on publishing accurate and timely product feeds, leaving the experience part to vertical shopping engines. Shoppers are already expecting search engines to provide that kind of service. And every retailer knows that traffic is not born from their brand alone but mostly from these search engines.

So search engines who want to grow their share of advertising revenues should prepare to hire taxonomists and user experience specialists. Merchandisers need visual shopping engines that deliver highly qualified customers passed the revolving doors, right in front of their products.

Shop.org 2009 Strategy and Innovation Forum

Feb. 2-4, Louise Guay, Jean-François St-Arnaud and Chantal Desrosiers demoed MVM's new offering at Shop.org 2009 Strategy and Innovation Forum. Our 3D Visual Search and My Virtual Model Community seem right on target as demonstrated by Ellen Davis' post on Shop.org Blog, "On the EXPO Floor":

"I spent quite a bit of time at last night’s networking dinner speaking with Jean-François St-Arnaud, one of the founders of My Virtual Model, which attempts to help retailers get customers over the hurdle of buying apparel online. The concept allows customers to build an avatar with their measurements and customize features like hair and eye color so that people can virtually "try on" clothing. In addition to helping customers put together outfits and get an understanding of what clothing would look like on them, the platform features a community where people can rate and comment on others’ looks, in addition to sharing their own styles.

Don’t take my word on how cool this is: check out the retail "dressing rooms" using My Virtual Model on websites like H&M, Sears and MSN Shopping. In addition to making people feel more comfortable with the idea of buying apparel online, I imagine that a platform like this could lower return rates as well."

Ok, if you don't want to take Ellen's word, you may take these:

The Technology Starlet: "My Virtual Model is the best virtual dressing room I found so far. You can find this interactive web app anywhere."
Virtual Dressing Rooms... Have They Gotten Any Better?

Momentary Lull: "One of the pleasures - and main selling point - when shopping for clothes is the ability to try things on, stroke the fabrics and have a reality check in the changing room. You can’t do that online but stores like sears.com try to fill this gap by letting you create a virtual model that looks like you. You can dress it and undress it at will and get a sense of how these crazy colors suit you."
Shoppertainment: 5 ways to have fun while shopping online

3DWalkthroughs: "My Virtual Model is one of the few companies that have really nailed it with regards to creating an application with real business value."
My Virtual Model - 3D Virtual Commerce Hit’s it’s Stride

Digital Vinyl: "It’s definately the best shopping avatar I’ve seen."
Style Avatars - H&M rocks online retail

Second Life Pros: "My Virtual Model is a concrete, and in my opinion very good, example of how you can try to make business on virtual things."
My virtual model

YPulse: "If this is successful, other brands will soon be forced to rethink the way they sell clothing online."
Sears Introduces Online 3-D Shopping

Thank you all, folks. Spread the word.

Fun is Transforming Online Fashion Shopping

There’s no doubt that online fashion shopping coupled with social networking is gaining momentum on the Internet. Online shopping will even grow faster in coming years as Digital Kids replace Boomers on the marketplace.

As John Palfrey and Urs Gasser say in "Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives" (Basic Books, 2008):

"The first generation of "Digital Natives" - children who were born into and raised in the digital world - are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed."

Already popular with teens and young fashionistas, social shopping strongly appeals to a wider market of professional women, working moms, special sizes and seasonal shoppers going for casual and workplace clothes, swimsuits, outerwear, party dresses, jeans, sportswear, sleepwear, lingerie, etc.

Beth Cherry posted this plea on her blog (October 12, 2008):

"Dear All Clothing Stores in the World,

Could you please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top, engage with My Virtual Model? Right now, you can only really play with Landsend, H&M, Sears, and a few others. I stayed up way past my bedtime tonight dressing my blue-eyed pony-tail wearing model, but I PROMISE this is the way I want to shop online: (1) it’s fun, (2) I "try on" things I would never try on in the store because it is fast, (3) I can store the data (outfits) for future reference (or for when I go into the store to try on an outfit for real) and share with my girlfriends. The more stories that participate, the more I can build outfits without running from store to store. It reminds me of that Fashion Plates toy from when I was a kid, except my model actually has hips as wide as my own. She needs to get on an exercise bike.

Regards,

Beth"

What we have learned from MVM users is that there’s never enough clothing, brands, styles, colors or accessories to curb any appetite. That’s because sameness is boring; the end of fashion is boring; having your cake and not eating it is boring.

The truth is: Fashion is Fun!