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Following up on my own question with a concrete sketch, so there is something to react to. This is a draft of a vendor-namespace extension, ai.vsize.shopping.fit, extending catalog search and lookup. Feedback on the shape, and on where it should live, is what I’m after.
Principle. Fit is a comparison between two measurements, not a summary of opinions. All values in millimetres, with a tolerance and a source. Every assessment carries a confidence, and unknown is a valid answer.
json source is one of last_measured, last_derived, in_shoe_measured, estimated, so an agent can tell fact from estimate.
json plus measurement_method, measured_at, consent: true. The profile belongs to the buyer and is not stored by the business without separate consent.
json The image above is what zone-by-zone looks like to a shopper in our own implementation (VSIZE): green where the geometry agrees, white where it is close. The protocol field is the same information, machine-readable. Non-goals: no reviews or return statistics, no size conversion (ISO 19407 covers that), no storage of foot data on the business side. Open questions: (1) Do internal_dimensions belong on the variant, or in a separate capability? (2) Can foot_profile travel in catalog context, or does buyer measurement data need its own consent path, like identity linking? (3) Can vocabulary reference an externally governed, paid standard, the same question #971 raises for print? I’ll publish the schema under vsize.ai and link it here. If anyone on the merchant or scanner side would want to expose or consume these fields, I’d like to hear it. |
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Schema and spec are now published: https://vsize.ai/ucp/fit (schema at https://vsize.ai/ucp/schemas/fit.json). Source, examples and issues: https://github.com/awepthon/ucp-fit. Background: https://vsize.ai/insights-fit-extension.html. Comments welcome here or there. |
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I work with footwear fit and have been reading the shopping schemas and the ask capability with one question in mind: how is an agent supposed to know whether a product will fit the person it is buying for?
As far as I can see, today the protocol gives an agent two things:
For apparel the gap is partly covered by vendor fit services that infer size from purchase and return history. For footwear it is sharper: two shoes labelled EU 40 can differ by a full size or more in internal length, and by far more in instep girth, because the internal shape is set by the last, not by the size label. A buyer in a store compensates by trying the shoe on. An agent cannot. Fit sits at the intersection of two use cases already listed in Potential Future Use Cases #98, advanced product knowledge and personalization, but has no data representation in either.
So the question I would like to raise is whether fit should eventually be a measurable property of the product variant rather than an opinion attached to it. Concretely, something like:
• a small set of internal dimensions on a variant (length, ball width, instep height, with units and a tolerance), and
• a way for the buyer side to supply the corresponding body measurements, with consent, so that any agent can compare the two and express a result with a confidence level. The vocabulary already exists: ISO/TC 137 publishes Mondopoint for the foot (ISO 9407), a sizing vocabulary (ISO 19408), measurement of last dimensions (ISO 19409) and in-shoe measurement (ISO 19410-1). What is missing is not a definition but a place in commerce data where those numbers are published, so that an agent can read them.
I am aware that the contribution guide points new capabilities toward a vendor namespace first (com.{vendor}.*) and to core only after multi-party adoption. That seems right, and I would be glad to put a draft schema in such a namespace if there is interest. Before doing that I wanted to ask:
• Has fit or measurement data been discussed before, here or in a Tech Council? The closest I found is Print vertical for UCP: open vocabulary, schemas and product identity, ready to reference #971 on the print vertical, which raises the related question of referencing an externally governed vocabulary; footwear would face the same question with the ISO/TC 137 sizing standards. I searched Discussions and the schemas and did not find it, but may have missed it.
• Is the intended home for this a catalog concern (facts about the variant) or an ask concern (business answers a question)? My instinct is catalog, because facts should be comparable across businesses, but I would like to hear how the maintainers think about it.
• Are there apparel or footwear businesses here who would want to expose measurement data if a field existed?
For transparency: I am building in this space, so I have an interest in the answer. But the question stands on its own. Agents are already buying on people's behalf, and the one thing they cannot do is try the shoe on.
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