Fashion gets a digital upgrade with the Google Awareness API

Posted by Jeremy Brook, Group Creative Business Partner, the ZOO

Last summer, we made the Awareness API available to all developers through Google Play services for the first time, providing a powerful and unified sensing platform that enables apps to be aware of all aspects of a user's environment. By using a combination of context signals, such as location, physical activity, weather and nearby beacons, developers can better understand their users individually and provide more engaging and customized mobile app experiences.

We have already seen some great implementations of the API in obvious scenarios, such as shopping for a new home in the neighborhood or recommending a music playlist while starting a jog. For New York Fashion Week, we explored other creative integrations of the Awareness API and collaborated with H&M Group's digital fashion house Ivyrevel and its Fashion Tech Lab to bring couture into the digital age with the 'Data Dress,' a personalized dress designed entirely based on a user's context signals.

Currently under development, the Android app specifically uses the Snapshot API within the platform to passively monitor each user's daily activity and lifestyle with their permission. Where do you regularly eat out for dinner or hang out with friends? Are they more casual or formal meetups? What's the usual weather when you're outside? After the course of a week, the user's context signals are passed through an algorithm that creates a digitally tailored dress design for the user to purchase.

The Android app is launching in closed alpha stage, and is currently being tested by selected global style influencers including Ivyrevel's co-founder Kenza Zouiten. If you want a truly 'tailored' digital experience, sign up here to participate in a future trial of the app before the public release.