The Brief

Tools: Arduino board Neo-pixel Lights 2-Way Mirror 3rd Party API for Facial Recognition HD Web Cam Mac Mini LCD Display Screen As a woman, choosing the right make-up shade and the trendiest product for the season can be a frustrating experience when given a plethora of choices. Magic Mirror combines facial recognition technology and make-up recommendations by trend experts to give make-up recommendations based on the customer's skin tone and age. It's essentially a make-up assistant in a box. The technology is at Beta stage and has been showcased at a global retail forum in May 2014.

Intention/Purpose: The innovation helps women decide the right make-up to purchase by the season and helps stores reduce manpower need for make-up store assistants through technology. It combines existing facial recognition technology together with proprietary software delivered through the Arduino board. The technology was created as part of a showcase at a global retail forum in May 2014 and was made to help retail clients who wish to embrace technology and create better shopper experiences in their stores. The idea was born from a creative technology workshop we conducted with our planners who were asked to include technology in their ideas to solve a brand challenge. The insights gathered by the planners who interviewed women shopping for make-up during the full day workshop informed the technology. The technology is a completely new innovation except for the Facial Recognition aspect, which came from a 3rd Party API. The HD web cam scans the face of the shopper and sends their image to the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini uploads the image to the Internet for the facial recognition software to process. Based on the values given, our proprietary software displays the necessary recommendations through a HDMI port connected to the display screen and controls the light setup through the Arduino board. Our team's hired full-time developer controls the technology stack. The technology have gathered interest from the agency clients and are in discussion to be rolled out in retail stores. The technology received investment from the agency's internal R&D budget.

We intend to sell the technology to cosmetic brands interested in doing a custom trial run in selected stores. The technology may free up manpower in make-up stores for shoppers who prefer shop for their own make-up with minimal assistance. It can also empower the make-up store assistance to give more informed recommendations to shoppers. We have an actual working prototype that was shipped to the UK office. Several Twitter users have tweeted about the technology in the past months and we're in discussions to trial the technology with one of the largest cosmetics brand.