Virtual Visions, a pioneering retail technology company, is transforming the physical retail experience through their innovative smart display systems and integrated inventory management solutions. Featured in Forbes and set to deploy in popular retailers, Virtual Visions sought to enhance their platform with an intuitive, AI-powered product recommendation system.
Virtual Visions selected Innovative Solutions to develop a proof of concept (POC) on a new product concept that, like popular dating apps, would allow users to swipe-left/swipe-right and thereby train an AI model on their preferences so their product can make more appropriate recommendations.
Innovative used its Tailwinds product, in conjunction with Amazon Bedrock and IBM watsonx Assistant, to build a proof of concept to demonstrate the performance, latency, and customer experience impact.
Business Objectives
- Create an intuitive, swipe-based product discovery interface
- Deliver real-time personalized recommendations through AI
- Implement an AI-powered Virtual Stylist for personalized shopping guidance
- Integrate seamlessly with existing smart display systems
The Challenge
Virtual Visions wanted to explore using AI to create an engaging and personalized product discovery experience for retail shoppers. Traditional recommendation systems can overwhelm users with choices, or require complex user interfaces, which can lead to decision fatigue, reduced engagement, and as a result, less relevant recommendations.
As part of their ongoing effort to innovate, Virtual Visions wished to validate whether a simpler, more intuitive interface combined with sophisticated AI could create a more effective shopping experience. The solution needed to be both highly responsive and capable of learning from user interactions in real-time.
The Solution
Innovative Solutions designed and implemented a focused POC leveraging several different technologies. The POC successfully demonstrated five results:
- Smart Product Understanding: With Innovative’s Tailwinds, the solution was able to learn what products customers like based on their choices and then improve future recommendations. Learn more about Innovative Tailwinds
- Virtual Stylist: Using IBM watsonx Assistant, the system provides personalized fashion advice and product recommendations through natural conversation, enhancing the shopping experience with expert guidance, as an option for users who prefer that type of interaction method.
- Instant Search: The system finds similar products quickly, ensuring a smooth shopping experience even with large product catalogs.
- Continuous Learning: Each customer interaction makes the recommendations smarter, creating an ever-improving shopping experience The project focused on validating both the technical feasibility and user experience aspects of a novel recommendation system, while also providing the Virtual Visions product team with a foundation for ongoing development and enhancement.
The project focused on validating both the technical feasibility and user experience aspects of a novel recommendation system, while also providing the Virtual Visions product team with a testing and rapid prototyping platform for ongoing development.
“At Virtual Visions, our goal is to enable an engaging and value-driven omni-channel experience at Physical Retail Stores. Innovative Solutions helped us validate a completely new approach to retail engagement and recommendations,” said Hooman Hodjat, CTO of Virtual Visions. “The POC showed us that modern AI from leading providers such as AWS and IBM allow us to build a continuous learning system with a simple and engaging user experience.”
Future Vision and Expected KPIs
As of the result of this project, Virtual Visions has a foundation for AI-powered personalization across retail channels, which if implemented, is expected to result in the following:
- 40% increase in product discovery engagement rates
- 50% increase in relevant product recommendations
- 90% lift in Product Click-Through Rate
- 50% lift in Conversion
- 5% lift in average basket
- Overall, +50% lift in In-Store Digital Sales
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