Smart mirror, what it is and how an “intelligent” mirror works

Smart mirror of the Adidas store located in Oxford Street, London. Credit: CHARGED.

The smart mirrorsor smart mirrorscombine the function of a “traditional” mirror with the ability to display information in digital format on its reflective surface, offering an interactive touch interface. These devices, thanks to advanced technologies such as RFID (Radio-Frequency IDentification), artificial intelligence And IoT (Internet of Things), they can recognize objects and people, providing personalized suggestions, notifications, and even environmental simulations. Places in a clothing storefor example, allow you to see matching accessories, choose different color or size options, all to complete purchases more efficiently and easily. In the’domestic environmentInstead, these mirrors can serve as smart home hubs, showing notifications, weather updates, or even food preparation information.

Smart mirrors: what they are and how they work

The smart mirrors they are essentially interactive screens that combine the reflective surface of a “traditional” mirror with advanced technologies, including RFID And artificial intelligence. This allows a whole series of information to be shown on the surface of their display, which can help the user complete their purchasing experience (if they are looking at themselves in the smart mirror of a shop) or display various types of information, such as weather conditions, news or updates from social media if you are at home. In addition to this, thanks to features such as voice recognition and the integrated touchpad, customers can navigate between products with a swipe of their fingers, receive personalized suggestions and even complete purchases from the mirror itself.

The study Smart Mirror Global Market Report 2023 published March 2023 by ReportLinker highlighted how the technological mirror sector is growing strongly: the market value has gone from 2.82 billion dollars in 2022 to $3.28 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach i $5.58 billion by 2028. Despite these numbers, however, it is still too early to say whether smart mirrors will have widespread diffusion in the homes of the future or not.

What is a smart mirror for?

But let’s get to the point now: Smart mirrors are really good for something or are they simple tech “quirks”? Apply yourself to world of shoppingtheir use can actually improve the shopping experience, allowing customers to reduce the time needed to search for products and try on clothes and allowing stores to improve interaction with the customer and, consequently, also sales conversions. How? By taking advantage of RFID technology, incorporated into the tags of each garment, the mirror recognizes the product arriving in the dressing room and creates a sort of virtual shopping cart. By interfacing with the store catalogue, it then provides purchasing suggestions that will be useful for the user to make a wise choice.

There are already several chains that have implemented the use of tech mirrors in some of their stores. Wella And Adidasfor example, use this technology to allow the simulation of haircuts or outfits in real time. The clothing chain H&Mhowever, has experimented with mirrors that transform customers’ selfies into the front pages of magazines, as can also be appreciated from the following video.

From the user’s point of view, using a smart mirror can speed up (quite a bit) the trying on of garments and, consequently, their purchase. Furthermore, the entire shopping experience becomes more personalized and fun. For retailers, however, using smart mirrors in their store dressing rooms can allow them to collect valuable customer data, personalize offers and promote their products more effectively.

It must be said, however, that before reaching a greater diffusion in the context of in-store sales, smart mirrors will have to overcome some challenges related to the high costs of their implementation, in addition to all the implications related to data privacy.

Smart mirror made by Max Braun, former Google engineer. Credit: One Zero / Medium.