Accurate Data Labeling Powers the Volumental Shoe Sizing App

The Overview

Volumental produces shoe recommendations for millions of shoppers by leveraging a combination of 3D foot scans, retail purchase data, and AI. Their team partnered with Sama to label the datasets that fuel the computer vision technology for their mobile foot scanning app — one piece of Volumental’s technology suite which empowers retailers and brands to create frictionless and more personalized experiences for their customers, both in-store and online.

“For our mobile app, we needed extremely precise segmented data because we knew that every missed pixel would easily add up to millimeters of lost accuracy.”

Mikael Andersson, Sr Product Owner at Volumental

The Challenge

Measuring feet accurately is hard, even with state-of-the-art sensors. Existing AR frameworks did not provide the level of accuracy required for Volumental’s mobile foot scanner, so they set out to build their own proprietary models. For more accurate, comprehensive 3D scans, Volumental needed:

Labels with pixel-perfect accuracy
Because every missed pixel adds up to millimeters of lost accuracy, Volumental needed pixel-perfect raster masks for their proprietary CV models.

Ability to adapt to a diversity of edge cases
In order for algorithms to behave predictably, data labelers needed to know how to handle edge cases such as shadows, low-contrast light, and occlusions.

Flexibility to scale over time
Volumental needed a labeling partner who could help them refine their CV models early on with tight feedback loops, with the flexibility to scale label volume quickly when required.

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97.8%

Average Quality Score

+

More loyal customers and fewer returns

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More revenue for retailers and brands

The Solution

Sama worked with Volumental to deliver high-quality labeled data to power their technology:

Delivered annotations with an average Quality Score of 97.84%

Maintained tight feedback loops to ensure edge cases were caught and accounted for

Partnering with Sama assured Volumental that the diversity of their datasets would be accurately represented in their models: to deliver hyper-personalized experiences to delight their users across the globe.

“Having worked with different cloud providers where the staff doing the actual work was always very hidden from us, we appreciated the transparency and social sustainability of Sama.”

Mikael Andersson, Sr Product Owner at Volumental

Conclusion

In part thanks to accurately labeled data, Volumental is creating more delightful omnichannel shopping experiences for consumers. Accurate 3D foot scans are just one piece of the puzzle: combined with their extensive database of purchase behavior and proprietary ML algorithms, Volumental can deliver hyper-personalized recommendations to consumers.

These recommendations don’t only provide better shopping experiences for users, they remove friction from the buying process and result in fewer online returns. The end result? Happy, loyal customers and ultimately, more revenue for retailers and brands — all thanks to AI-powered fit recommendations.