By Barry Santini, ABOM

If you truly want to revolutionize and transform the eyewear shopping experience from one that feels like a necessary evil to one of excitement and desire, you should take a serious look at the latest Virtual Try On technology.

Virtual Try On, better known as VTO, is a technology in its infancy. Surprisingly, VTO is not being held being held back by a lack of technology. Neither is it being hindered through avoidance by the public.

No. VTO is being held back from reaching its full potential as perhaps the greatest tool ever to enhance the process of selecting and selling eyewear by an old and ancient enemy. You, the eyecare professional.

The Wrong Yardsticks
The eyecare profession, seen from a strictly healthcare perspective, is a dynamic, fast changing environment. New findings from vision research, such as the discovery of a unknown layer of the cornea, or the prospect of making the blind see with an artificial retina, are almost becoming common occurrences. Yet, the process of choosing, measuring and fitting eyewear has remained largely unchanged since the early days of the last century. Why? Because the training of ECPs in their approach to fitting glasses remains strictly prescription-based, as in: "Hello. I'd be glad to help you with your new glasses. May I see your prescription?"

VTO technology has nothing to do with an eyeglass prescription. It's all about helping people imagine eyewear, Rx in hand or not, in strictly fashion terms. This is important to our patients. A spectacle lens prescription implies need, fashion implies want. With want comes a mind less concerned with money and more motivated by pleasure. And pleasure fulfillment potentially means an eyewear wardrobe, instead of single pair low cost eyewear. Before you condemn this proposition as unprofessional, when was the last time one of your patients told you wearing eyeglasses was pleasurable?

We eyecare professionals have been myopic in our approach to fitting eyewear. We've failed to see the forest for the trees. If we want the public to view glasses as a fashion opportunity and freed of prescription-need dependence, we're going to have to place far less emphasis on our trusted yardsticks, including rulers, seg gauges and lens clocks. We need to begin to transform the public's view of eyewear from something to be avoided to a want with the power and draw of fashion. VTO is the perfect transformative agent to do the job.

Step into the World of VTO
Advancements in software, pixel density and display resolution have finally brought us to the juncture where a serious case can be made that the act of placing an image of a frame upon a person's face, instead of the actual frame itself, is the best way to raise eyewear to the class of fashion including shoes, watches and jewelry. Think about it: With VTO, the wearer instantly becomes a member of the jury, with an equal voice in the voting process, instead of the defendant. Using Virtual Try On technology, an ECP can and should step back from the normal concentration on one's face, skin, eye color and hair, and see the eyewear in the larger overall context of a wardrobe, which finally frees eyewear from its one-style-fits-all prison. And by expanding the color, style and texture of the surrounding clothing, which VTO makes easy, both the ECP and the wearer are no longer held hostage to the influence of the clothing worn that day.

If you truly want to revolutionize and transform the eyewear shopping experience from one that feels like a necessary evil to one of excitement and desire, you should take a serious look at the latest Virtual Try On technology. I don't know about you, but I would give anything to not hear "I hate choosing new glasses" ever again.