Now that Black Friday is here, what about virtual reality shopping? Could VR end the madness of the Thanksgiving crowds rushing into stores and fighting over deals? Or at least enhance our customary retail experience?

Let’s look at a couple of virtual reality shopping proposals and what the future may hold.

Virtual Reality shopping

in Wired UK, Henry Stuart from the VR production company Visualize suggests that virtual reality shopping will be very tactile and personal:

Shopping will be tailored in VR . . . It will only show stuff that’s relevant to you, and you will be able to pick things up in the virtual world and feel them, as well as playing with them, before you start to buy them.

Stuart sees a time when we’ll do full-body scans and then meet friends online to shop for clothes.

The British designer Allison Crank sees a much more extreme virtual reality shopping experience. As Fast Company jokes, it looks like “Second Life on Acid”.

In Crank’s Reality Theater, the focus is less on the experience of shopping and more on entertainment. You’ll be immersed in surreal, dream-like landscapes:

a new third place for the public to meet, perform, indulge, and play in immersive environments.

Technically, we’re a long way from what she imagines. The project foresees people sitting on a train and virtually walking through an immersive media space, consuming entertainment, buying things and socializing with others.

Sixense Virtual Reality

For a more concrete proposal, take a look at the demo from Sixense – a wireless controller takes the best aspects of being in a store (physically handling the objects) and combines it with online shopping.

Sixense is in the Kickstarter doghouse due to their lack of communication and product delays (you can see the many negative comments here), but their video is a fascinating take on how you might shop in VR:

https://youtu.be/E6lVnGtlqtU

One thing they get right – virtual reality shopping will require the ability to manipulate objects. The problem with Sixense is their continual delays; Oculus will get to the market first. And their Kickstarter backers may be out of luck.

Volvo and Microsoft’s HoloLens

Perhaps the closest we are to a virtual reality shopping project right now is the recently announced partnership between Volvo and Microsoft. With the latter’s Hololens, Volvo wants to offer prospective buyers a physically empty but high-tech radically showroom.

Here’s how you might shop for a car using the mixed reality in HoloLens:

 

In the Medina

Years ago, I was in the Medina in Fez, Morocco, one of the oldest markets in the world. It was an amazing experience and I got hopelessly lost. Repeatedly. I understand why many tourists don’t visit without a guide.  You immediately lose the feeling of being in control.

It’s why Americans like their malls – they’re predictable in their uniformity. When we shop we want to be in control – or more precisely, feel like we’re in control.

Of course, the Medina is not a puzzle to anyone living in Fez. But they experience it in a way I never could, an ever-changing flow of goods, discussions, bartering and surprises around every corner.

As a shopping platform, virtual reality will need to give us both agency and surprise, empowerment along with the delight of the unexpected. A Medina of the Mind.

Virtual Reality and Black Friday

Virtual Reality shopping will need a fully functional tactile element (hand controllers are only an interim solution). You need to see objects on you, visualize them by your side, flip them over. And shopping is a social experience – you want to interact with sellers and your friends.

We’ll get to virtual reality in entertainment long before we get to VR shopping. But when we do, our current VR platforms will seem rudimentary.

Until then, Black Friday will continue. And when virtual reality shopping finally arrives, I’m sure we’ll find new ways to (at least) virtually push and shove one another for the “bargain” of the year.