"I haven't seen any other projects that have taken this seriously. I think it's an interesting first step," said Henry Lieberman, a research scientist in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Lieberman's research group developed a fashion recommender, which Discovery reported on last year. But when it comes to fashion, there are lots of variables, Lieberman said, such as differences between men and women and the colors and sizes each group prefers. Some people might choose baggy clothes, while others might like their clothes tight. Being able to understand which features are important to people will be key to making the system work. "Obviously there are a lot of technical issues that need to be dealt with one by one before you can have a satisfactory customer experience," said Lieberman. "It's nice that they're thinking about a situation where technology is not traditionally used," he added. Zhang's system is owned by PARC and is still in the prototype stage. But it's not limited to just the dressing room. Zhang thinks that the clothes-matching and retrieval technology could be shrunk down to fit mobile device applications. For example, if a person is window shopping and sees an item in an expensive boutique, she could snap a photo of it with her camera phone and then upload it to a Web site. There, the image could be compared to other clothing in a database, which could provide the user with similar clothing available at a lower price nearby. Related Links: |
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