Virtual Assistants are no longer a matter of science fiction in today’s technological landscape. They’ve practically become indispensable, being everywhere in the online space, from support tools to intelligent guidance for buying items. The number of available virtual assistants on the market is only increasing, and they are set to become an even more integrated part of our online (and offline) lives. According to Statista, there will be over 8 billion digital voice assistants in use worldwide by 2024, almost equal to the world’s population.

What are virtual assistants?

A virtual or digital assistant, can be defined as an application that carries out tasks specific to humans based on commands or questions. It is the best tool for giving feedback and indications and helping users with the flow of any program. Digital experiences alongside virtual assistants are considered one of the best technological advances and most promising consumer trends of our times. Through these tools, business can bring real life closer to the users in the online space, whatever they’re browsing for.

Why are virtual assisstants important for Esenca?

At Esenca, we’ve always been concerned with making the body scanning process more accessible and faster, as well as eliminating frustration for the clients in the form of useless information or commands that can’t be understood quickly. To do that, we decided that introducing a cirtual assistant into our solution would be the perfect idea.

Our Virtual Assistant uses cutting-edge technology such as Machine Learning (ML) to infer body key-points, Computer Vision (CV) to tackle the image segmentation issues and Deep Learning to keep the learning loop going on with each user that scans themselves through Esenca. Voice communication is also an important factor in why we’ve decided to implement a virtual assisstant. Not only is it the perfect tool for man-machine communication, but there are certain situations where this is the only possible way of interaction, plus there is no need to use hands or vision, so the user is free to undertake another activity — such as, in this case, getting measured with the help of Esenca.

There is another important factor in why virtual assistants are needed, especially for a tool like Esenca: feedback. People need reassurance that they are staying in the correct position during the measurement process. If the instructions are unclear, the process will take longer, seeing as you have to find the proper pose and place for the measurement pictures. Paired with CV, our virtual assistance is able to tell you if you’re in the wrong pose, in the wrong environment, or in the wrong step of the process. With a virtual assistant guiding your way, the entire process only takes less than 30 seconds, resulting in 100+ measurements across the human body.

There’s always more to do, though: while we’re happy with the level of support we can offer with the current version of our virtual assistant, we’re looking forward to the future where we can further integrate it into our outfit / size recommendation process, as well as other features like analytics and scheduled measurements.