No abstract

Immersive 3D environments have been a major research area in different scientific domains such as Human-Computer Interaction, display devices, etc. Mixed Reality (MR) technologies are one of the most interesting section of immersive environments that has a huge potential of deployment in a diverse range of industries, Retail being one of them. Retail started from traditional physical in-store setups and has been evolving ever since. Integration of technologies gave birth to Digital and Omnichannel Retail and for efficient development and deployment of MR in Omnichannel Retail, appropriate research must be made to provide proper frameworks and guidelines to developers and managers to optimize User Experiences. This paper investigates the current state of the art of MR in Retail by reviewing the present literature in the domain. It proposes important research gaps based on the analysis and understanding to provide further researches a clear picture of the different aspects associated with optimal application of MR technology in Retail sector.

As the retail sector transitions into an omnichannel model, most brick and mortar stores are struggling to keep up with the competition by digital retail formats. Offline retail is still lacking the means to enrich the shopping experience in-store to make it more convenient, personalized and engaging. To this end, we introduce a novel in-store recommender system leveraging head-mounted mixed reality displays. The system enhances the shopping experience by introducing immersion and addressing the customer's desire to be treated on a personal level.

Mixed reality has been identified as one of the technologies that can be deployed in omnichannel retail to improve the customer shopping experience. The article presents a mixed reality based digital shopping assistant which aims to provide retail customers with a holistic shopping experience. Design science research methodology is used to develop this physical artifact that comprises of assisting elements: product information, reviews, recommendations and a buy button. A study was conducted with two different head-mounted displays (Microsoft HoloLens and HoloLens 2) where 29 participants evaluated the proposed physical artifact and brings out the relationship between shopping experience constructs that constitutes a modern omnichannel retail customer experience. Results show a positive attitude of customers towards the technology. Differences between the two-head mounted displays were observed in terms of perceived privacy issues. Technology adoption, enjoyment and security beliefs of the customers are observed to have a significant effect on the user’s intention to use the technology. The results also reveal that a customer’s perceived convenience, perceived service quality, attitude towards the retailer and the word of mouth are affected significantly by their intention to use the technology. These results, along with qualitative comments from the participants are used to extract research, development and deployment implications for future iterations of shopping assistant systems based on mixed reality.

Technology has broadened the perspective healthcare delivery. Computer vision is such an enhanced spectrum of scientific revolution that imparts automated intelligence to assist patients with full or partial vision difficulties. This discipline engages machine acumen with learning and mining techniques to substitute impairment with clarity in vision. This helps people suffering from visionary ailments to see the world and experience its elegance through machine intelligence. The chapter surveys the recent and smartly configured technologies for building models and related applications, which could be useful for managing health problems in case of visually challenged ones. Several intelligent systems are analyzed and highlighted that can be utilized for providing sub-optimal cure to the concerned patients who mostly confront problems in plight of accessing relevant information, thereby receiving severely limited healthcare facilities. The chapter also illustrates several methods and mechanisms that can be applied to tailor treatment strategies as per the criticality and need towards customized clinical care for vision impairment.