The Magic Mirror
Back in 2008 I was fascinated with touch screen technologies. My agency was working on touch based travel information kiosk back then. We worked with TV screens equipped with infra red based finger detection technology. We did our best trying to building something smooth on top of it. When we’ve met our client showing first version something unplanned happened. He wanted to use our solution with screen lying flat on the table. It didn’t work. He had a suit and his sleeve was distracting finger detection. The technology was clunky and very limited at that stage. It didn’t stopped from dreaming though.
I discovered the Smart Mirror concept back then. I was amazed at the time. “That’s the future!” I thought. My geeky fellows were feeling the same. You can see different kind of information in your mirror! Time, weather or even news! You can interact with it too. That’s exciting! I was sure somebody will pick up this idea and build great product on top. Smart Mirrors will replace ordinary ones very soon.
It didn’t happened. Eight years have passed and we still use regular mirrors. There are only few DIY projects like this and this. They get quite impressive media coverage from time to time. There is a problem though. I haven’t heard about any finalised product I could use. Why people keep trying to make smart mirror and why it doesn’t fly?
Smart mirror design is beautiful
The most appealing part of this concept is its visually presence, I believe. Simple, pure design. Piece of reflective glass with very intimate interface hidden behind. Futuristic but timeless at the same time. It inspires and inflames desire. Just read comments for different DIY projects. People want to buy mirror, even though there is no practical value delivered or even mentioned. Amazing design can make money on its own!
Smart Mirror as a morning buddy
People tend to thing about the mirror as a morning buddy. Assistant that you start the day with. It can provide all important information with voice recognition or touch control. It can show time, news, weather or calendar events. There are even projects with Google Play Store pre-installed. The possibilities are endless!
Morning routine could be the case few years ago. Since then smartphones showed up and changed everything. According to the Cisco Connected World Technology Report 90% of young people starts their day with the smartphone. They use it immediately after waking up. So at the time of approaching bathroom they are already up-to-date with all the news and relevant information. Smart watch technology is also taking off. With all relevant information on your wrist why should you care about using mirror for status updates?
Smart Mirror equels Smart Home
Mirror is treated as interactive console for smart home solutions. It allows get status update of home power consumption. It can help turn off the kitchen lights too. You can control every aspect of your home. The trend here is tightly related to the community involved. Smart home solutions are very popular among makers. They really like to build cool things. Actual value for the user is not that important. It has to make impression.
In practise this kind of interface doesn’t make much sense. It’s strange to perform actions constantly looking at the reflection. Its surface makes UI less visible. Touch interface makes interaction even worse with finger marks. Mirror is not portable so you need to approach it every time you want to take an action. In addition smart home solutions are clearly going into different direction. They adopted tablet apps, providing full home control from any part of your home. Enchantments in voice recognition and artificial intelligence are showing another direction. Smart bots like Amazon Alexa leads to the future of smart home interaction.
Start with its original purpose in mind!
Every product manager knows that there have to be at least one thing that your product is amazing at. Building connected version of physical object should start with its original purpose in mind. It’s obvious for mirror. Reflect body to validate its current physical condition. That’s it. Showing news, weather or controlling your home lights are not tightly connected with original purpose of mirror. This kind of information is not relevant at the moment of interaction. And definitely it does not extend the experience. It sounds more like a distraction.
To make sense smart mirror can give insightful information about our body condition. Extend visible information with the one hidden from human eye. Progress in health monitoring technologies is required. It’s already happening. We wear smart bands constantly monitoring our heart rate. There are prototypes of glucose measuring contact lenses. Internet of Things and sensors market is growing rapidly. We’re still in early days though. Many specialists envision future with smart nanobots traveling in our blood and collecting information. From that perspective I can envision smart bathroom product that takes your health data collected by different sensors and combine it together. The results can be the presented on mirror surface with reflection augmented with additional info.
Another very natural usage of the smart mirror is fitting room experience. Trying on clothes is very complicated process now. You need to find clothes you want, find size, go to fitting room (sometimes not easy to find) and wait in line. When you finally dress up it appears the size you’ve picked is incorrect one and you need to go for another one. It can be done better.
Various retailers and fashion shops are trying to incorporate this kind of tech for a long time now. Ralph Lauren fiting room is example of the recent ones. It let’s you browse products. It can sense what you have in the room. It can event request shopping assistant for different dress sizes. It’s cool and practical but at this stage it’s still a marketing gadget. This product falls into the same trap I described before. It’s not enhancing it original purpose but adds custom UI to the store experience. It shows nicely looking light switches.
The proper implementation would require enhanced fitting experience. It’s not easy to do though. Our bodies are different one to another. Fashion of the clothes, sizes, lengths all matters. The first models of smart fitting mirrors where rendering two dimensional clothes on the reflection. It’s not what we expect. To push it further processing power is required. Our body needs to be quickly 3D scanned and rendered live augmented with clothes on top. Clothes renders should also behave in the natural way laying on our body. A lot of complicated calculations needs to be performed here. I believe we are getting there. Just check NVIDIA FaceWorks if you lack confidence.
I believe beautiful form factor of smart mirror will finally get into mainstream. Growing potential in processing power and health monitoring technologies will enable proper use cases. We will stop trying to make cool gadgets and do a useful product that anyone can benefit from.
