Adobe’s Idea For Gimmick-Free In-Store Tech

Though every brick-and-mortar retailer and its grandmother are chattering about how nice it would be to have the same kind of personalization technology that makes online shopping so customizable, few have figured how to make it a seamless part of the shopping experience.

Perhaps Adobe can help.

Fashionista reported that Adobe unveiled an ambitious new project at its annual digital marketing conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday (March 23) — a full-body scanner linked with data on purchasing history. Errol Denger, director of commerce at Adobe, demonstrated the tech at the conference. Though only calibrated for male bodies and clothing at the moment, Denger showed how an integrated Microsoft Kinect sensor — a gadget that retails for $99 instead of other uber-expensive tech interventions — collects granular details of the target’s body.

However, instead of just collecting superficial attributes, like height and hip size, Adobe claimed that the scanner can measure the length of a person’s spine, the ride of someone’s legs and much more. Once this composite image is created, the system can dig through past purchases, preferences listed on linked profiles and social media posts to deliver recommended products in the exact size that will fit the user’s every physical feature.

“Every [retailer] wants Burberry’s 121 Regent Street store,” Denger told the conference during his presentation.”That’s what we’re taking on. We don’t want a gimmick; we want to make sure it’s really immersive, the embodiment of that brand.”

While Denger might be saying the same thing that a hundred enterprising retailers have said before him, it’s worth noting that Adobe isn’t trying to shop its body-scanning tech to retailers just yet. In fact, the project doesn’t even have a name. Wednesday was its first “public” unveiling, which might indicate that whatever features it shows off now, many more are to come down the road.