Human Height & Weight Chart

Rob Cockerham is a very funny dedicated man. One of his most striking work-in-progress can be found here on Cockeyed.com. It's called the Photographic Height/Weight Chart.

The idea is simple and deep: people submit a head to toe photo of themselves along with their height and weight. Then Rob puts it in the corresponding empty square on his chart. So far, 193 photos have been placed on the chart, both men and women together.

Here's how it work: 

Height increases from bottom to top, from 4 ft 10 in. to 6 ft 8 in., each row counting for one more inch.

Weight increases from left to right, from 90 lbs to 380 lbs, each column standing for 10-lbs increment.

The diagonal pattern forming in the center of the chart is also to be found in a BMI chart. The Body Mass Index is defined as the individual's body weight divided by the square of his or her height.

Overlaying BMI lines over Rob's chart gives you this picture below. The leftmost line is BMI = 18 and the next one right to it is BMI = 25. Anyone in between these two lines has a healthy weight, according to insurers science. The next lines from left to right are BMI = 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, and 55.

It should come as no surprise that more people will found themselves in the 18-25 range than on any other area of the chart. Rob's sample obeys the same rules of ramdomness found in any poll or public survey. Unless there is something very special no one knows about about sending a photo of oneself over the web, all kinds of people should be willing to participate without skewing the stats intentionally.

This bar chart shows how many submissions Rob got for each 5-BMI unit range. This is close to the normal weight distribution in the US population. One has to remember that Rob counts only one submission for each square in his chart. While he must be receiving several submissions for the most frequent height/weight combinations, he's keeping only one for display.

When all squares will be filled in, the chart will somehow flatten and this will be skewed stats. Counting all real submissions should rather tend toward showing the normal distribution.

One final note:

To get a BMI of 55, one has to be something like 4' 10" and 380 lbs. No one of that size has participated in Rob's experiment yet but it's live since last year only.

There is plenty of empty squares left in the chart just waiting for volunteers. I guess Rob is still taking entries this year too so if you feel like it, just take a photo of yourself and send him an e-mail.
Here's the instructions about how to do it.

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.

Consumer Reports "Buying Clothes Online" Survey

Last December, Consumer Reports released a survey rating 39 apparel shopping Web sites:

“There were no real dogs among the 39 clothiers we've rated. Standouts, including L.L.Bean, Zappos, and Lands' End, tended to provide superior clothing quality, the most accurate descriptions and sizing information, an informative Web site, and an easy way to order and return items. (…) Other pluses include virtual models that let you "try on" merchandise, sizing guides, 360-degree and zoom views, and buyer reviews.”

Buying Clothes Online - Consumer Reports Magazine (Dec. 2008)

Experts weigh in on top shopping Web sites - Watch the Video on ABC7 (Los Angeles)

Who doesn’t want to be reviewed in Consumer Reports?

Since 1998, MVM and Lands’ End have teamed together to bring virtual modeling to men and women. Searching for “My Virtual Model” in Google Books returns more than a 100 citations in online marketing reviews, studies and textbooks. With such a blazing trail, there’s no doubt that competitors are coming at us so we’ve decided to outrun them and reposition our technology with MVM 3D Visual Search.