Log In Your Measurements…

An interesting article in The New York Times: Log In Your measurements, and your clothes may fit, by BOB Tedeschi | Published: March 12, 2007. I read:

So why not have a Web site where users can provide their basic body dimensions and style preferences, then see all the available clothing that would fit well and suit their taste? It is an idea so obvious that one wonders why it isn’t an established part of online shopping already: merchandise returns would drop, customers might well be happier and the Web site would earn a commission for every sale.

The article elaborates on the initiative of myShape (the image above is a screen shot taken from their website), and the need for body scanners “saving them [people] the trouble of measuring themselves.” This is what Intellifit does.

Mr. Charpentier, [the founder of Intellifit], who led the design team for the original Commodore 64 computer in the early 1980s, said Intellifit would install a scanner at Newark Liberty Airport and at Baltimore/Washington airport in the next three months.

Even after getting the measurements of consumers, apparel-matching services like Intellifit and myShape face challenges. Clothing manufacturers can be reluctant to take the precise measurements of their clothes and send them along.

I observe how these technologies affect spaces. I asked many times : “How would you design a library taking into account that every book will be digitized in few years time?” This above is another example of technology that has an impact onto space, as the need for road infrastructure, and storage spaces multiplies with online shopping (Steve Woolgar, ed., Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); pp. 1-22). Is architecture disappearing or just transforming our cities in an coagulation of storage spaces?

The article raises other questions: today’s mobilities are paradoxical: we are immobile shopping online while increasing the mobility of “PIGs”, People, Information and Goods as François Ascher, author of La Société Hypermoderne, says. Intellifit locate machines at airports, obviously linking technology to mobility… or maybe to surveillance…