Years of experimenting with augmented reality has paid off for footwear maker Nike Inc. with the company’s release of Nike Fit, an AR app that helps customers make sure they get properly sized shoes.
Many shoppers have gone online and ordered multiple pairs of the same style shoe, in different sizes, planning to send back what doesn’t fit.
The reasons are simple.
Consumers often find they fit into different sizes — maybe a 7.5 women’s here, an 8.5 women’s there — depending on the brand and style. So, when it comes time to buy a new pair, there’s a lot of guessing going on.
It’s actually, very likely you don’t even know what your true shoe size is. Your feet could also be two entirely different sizes.
Luckily for us shoppers, Nike announced last week the Nike Fit, a special measuring solution built directly into the company’s mobile app that uses a phone’s camera to scan feet.
The app gives you a few quick guidelines – take off your shoes, wear contrasting socks, find a clean wall, make sure the room is adequately lit – then prompts you to scan the room with your phone so it can find a place for you to stand.
On the screen, you drag a blue line to match where the wall meets the floor, then move to that space and place your heels flush against the wall. Point your phone’s rear camera at your feet and the scan begins.
That’s a whole bunch of flashy terms that don’t mean a whole lot to the average shoe shopper, but the gist of it is that the app will allow you to take a scan of your feet when you’re about to buy a pair of kicks.
Nike Fit will be an option alongside the traditional sizing list, but the company is obviously promoting this as the ideal way to get the perfect fit.
“Using your smartphone’s camera, Nike Fit will scan your feet, collecting 13 data points mapping your foot morphology for both feet within a matter of seconds,” Nike explains.
“This hyper-accurate scan of your unique foot dimension can then be stored in your NikePlus member profile and easily used for future shopping online and in-store.”
Your Nike Fit scan will be stored and can be accessed by the app whenever it needs to guide you to your perfect pair of new shoes.
Perhaps most interesting, this new sizing system may actually change its size recommendation for you based on the kind of shoe you’re shopping for.