If you happen to take a stroll through building 1472 Broadway, New York, you might stumble across your reflection in a mirror.
Given the fact that this is H & M’s flagship store in Times Square, this hardly seems like an incident worth describing. Except this is no ordinary mirror…
For starters, you can talk to it – and it’ll talk back. Ask it to take a selfie, for example, and it will happily oblige, capturing your graceful pose before immortalizing your beauty on the front cover of a virtual fashion magazine.
You can, of course, choose to share your new-found modelling profession with the world, by sending your personalized cover out across social media. Once that’s done, however, the mirror has more to offer. It can provide fashion advice, and allow the scanning of QR codes for discounts, offers, and automated shopping lists.
Developed in collaboration with H & M, Microsoft, Ombori and Visual Art, the mirror is powered by Microsoft Azure and its various cognitive solutions tools, including face and speech recognition, which kick into gear automatically when a customer walks up to the mirror.
“With the interactive mirror, we want to showcase new opportunities for voice assistants, and inspire how to interact with their customers in a creative, modern and fun way,” says Microsoft Business Developer Linda Pimmeshofer.
In addition to providing customers with a fun, novel experience, H & M has also benefitted with 86% of visitors interacting with AR codes and sharing their discounts, in addition to gaining subscribers to its newsletter.
“At H & M we are continuously innovating to improve customer experiences, and in this case we worked with Microsoft to develop a great mirror with voice recognition. We are delighted with our collaboration with Microsoft, where we learn how fashion and technology create new ways of interacting with customers, says Daniel Kulle, H & M North America’s boss.
If you happen to find yourself in Times Square and fancy kickstarting your modelling career, give the mirror a try, and tag @MSEurope to say hi.
