Written by | She Zongming

After putting on special glasses, a huge market immediately appeared in the desert, with thousands of stores and various vendors hawking their wares along the streets… This is the 28th-century shopping scene envisioned in the science fiction movie "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets".

Many people used to think that this scene was too far off, but the first-ever Virtual Reality Double 11 in history tells us: It's not as far away from us as we thought.

This year's Double 11 officially launched the Taobao Vision Double 11 venue. The highlight: This is the first time Double 11 has been launched simultaneously on PC, mobile, and XR platforms. Prior to this, no company had ever brought Double 11 to XR devices.

Double 11 + XR is undoubtedly a novel "combination". If the iteration from PC to smartphone to XR (including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)) devices corresponds to the upgrade from desktop computing to mobile computing to spatial computing, then the first launch of Double 11 on the XR platform is undoubtedly a sign that Double 11 has officially entered the era of spatial computing.

Here comes the question: What is it like to shop in the Double 11 spatial venue?

I can only say that it's an experience beyond words—even if you pile on terms like "immersive" and "highly engaging". It's something you have to experience to truly understand.

Personally, I almost thought I had traveled to the Double 11 of 2034, as it felt like a glimpse into the future of Double 11.

For example, when talking about red envelopes, many people think of two-dimensional red envelope images on computers and mobile phones, but the first-ever 3D red envelope rain in the Double 11 spatial venue makes users wearing head-mounted displays feel like they are in a fantastical world, with realistic, three-dimensional "red envelope rain clouds" falling from the sky and hitting them.

This scene reminds me of what futurist Kevin Kelly wrote in "What Technology Wants" about his prediction that "the next superplatform will be a mirrored world (based on mixed reality MR technology)" –

"We will become explorers of this mirrored world, dancing with it, controlling everything with the touch of our fingertips, experiencing it so deeply that it feels like we're actually there. Ultimately, physical space can be easily searched like text, and the web of hyperlinks between objects, like the graceful jumps between words, will weave unprecedented miracles and spur waves of innovation."

The phrase "the future is here" thus becomes more concrete.

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Imagine being able to "test drive" a Xiaomi SU7 while lying at home, with Lei Jun sitting in the passenger seat explaining its features to you…

Is this too far-fetched to imagine? It's okay if Liang Jingru doesn't give you the courage, but Taobao Vision has truly brought the SU7 into virtual reality space. Whether you're lying in bed or slacking off at work, you can "summon" the SU7.

As the first Chinese e-commerce shopping app on Apple Vision Pro, the Taobao Vision Pro version, launched in April this year, carries the expectation of "creating a future-oriented e-commerce shopping experience".

Vision Pro is essentially a head-mounted "phone," a versatile device for personal entertainment and work. However, viewing the launch of the Taobao app on Vision Pro as a simple cross-platform feature transfer would be too simplistic—Taobao Vision is not a copy-paste of the mobile app but a brand-new virtual shopping experience based on 3D interaction.

Zhao Kun, head of Taobao and Taobao XR business, said, "Taobao Vision fuses offline immersive shopping experiences with online shopping efficiency in an unprecedented way, marking the beginning of e-commerce shopping evolving from 2D to 3D, from flat to spatial."

It can be said that it reinvents online shopping through XR.

Over the years, the booming e-commerce industry has provided people with a convenient online shopping experience. However, the two-dimensional display of flat space cannot fully capture the complex characteristics and true charm of products.

Spatial e-commerce applications provide a solution to this: Relying on accumulated three-dimensional space technology, Taobao's XR application creates an immersive "virtual stroll" experience for consumers, showcasing products in realistic 3D forms. With 1:1 scale display technology, they can understand the actual size of products; using 360-degree rotation view and internal detail display, they can truly feel the fit and presentation of products in real environments.

In the past, if you wanted to buy a cabinet or a bed, you had to go to a physical store to measure and see the size. But with 3D rendering, ambient light simulation, and object occlusion shadow simulation, you can visually understand the actual placement effect of items. This is the value of Taobao's new spatial shopping experience.

This Double 11 spatial venue creates a novel shopping method: Users can travel to the future through the "magic door" built with cutting-edge technology, virtually controlling DJI drones, stacking COLMO refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines, and simulating playback on Vidda projectors, providing an unprecedented novel experience.

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While spatial shopping can reconstruct the shopping experience, considering the current popularity of XR devices, it's hard to avoid the question of whether creating a Double 11 spatial venue is worthwhile.

It's important to note that behind Taobao Vision's support for complete shopping functions such as login, search, messaging, and ordering is the support of adaptive building modes, spatial computing capabilities, 3D models, and spatial video technology, which inevitably come with significant technical research and development investments.

However, to evaluate the value of Taobao Vision, we should not look at today from yesterday's perspective but from tomorrow's perspective.

The evolution of e-commerce is a continuous process of improving user shopping efficiency and experience value. From websites to apps to XR, the main theme throughout is "improving the user experience."

Zhao Kun mentioned in a sharing that offline shopping has high emotional value but low efficiency; online shopping on shelf e-commerce platforms is efficient but lacks emotional value; and today, many content-based e-commerce platforms have achieved promising development by enhancing emotional value… However, images and videos are not the ultimate forms; immersion is the more advanced form.

The "experience e-commerce" formed by the combination of XR and e-commerce makes an ultimate experience possible. Users feel like they have entered the cyberspace in "Ready Player One": Standing on a one-square-meter workbench, they can experience a vast new world.

A new carrier means new entry points, new scenarios, and new opportunities. It goes without saying that the current e-commerce industry is highly competitive, but this competition is more about Stock game . If you gain more, I lose more, ultimately leading to a zero-sum situation.

Experience e-commerce can bring a new experience of "double enhancement of shopping efficiency and emotional value," thereby attracting more users to try and explore this new experience, forming new shopping habits among users, and creating new growth for the e-commerce industry.

The Double 11 spatial venue is a pioneering testbed. Extending the coverage of Double 11 from the Taobao webpage on PC to the Taobao app on mobile phones and further to Taobao Vision on XR devices, it is evident that Taobao and Tmall, as the pioneers of Double 11, are envisioning the possibilities of the next stage of e-commerce.

With the era of AI already upon us and XR closely connected to AI, we cannot deny the future potential of "experience e-commerce" just because XR has not yet reached mass popularization. Taobao and Tmall, which are defying entropy increase, are demonstrating their determination to bet on and explore the future with the pioneer spirit of "being the first to eat crab."

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Against the backdrop of the prevalent "competition mantra," the new experience leveraged by XR + e-commerce can also be transformed into new opportunities for brands.

If there's any content presentation method best suited for immersive product presentation, it's XR.

Taobao Vision uses spatial computing capabilities and multi-window capabilities to reshape product information flow, making it no longer a dream to display products larger and more three-dimensionally and making it more convenient for users to view and compare multiple products; it also expands the dimensions of user interaction with products through 3D interaction, eye-tracking gestures, voice input, and other technologies, enabling an online closed loop from seeing to trying and then buying for experiential consumption.

In September this year, Taobao Vision launched the world's first virtual test drive product for consumers—the Xiaomi SU7 virtual test drive project.

As we all know, since its launch this year, the Xiaomi SU7 has become an instant hit. Many users want to experience it but can't. However, the virtual test drive product can make up for this regret : Users can immerse themselves in the car's appearance and feel its quality in panoramic large-screen mode, experience the "real car" performance in MR mixed reality mode, and virtually test drive the car in VR virtual reality mode…

In this way, product performance can be more fully demonstrated with the help of scenario-based restoration; elements such as video windows and dynamic interactive operations can help companies attract popularity and traffic; and user trust based on immersive experiences will stimulate or strengthen their purchase intention.

When brand stories and product connotations are no longer unilaterally disseminated but renewed through deep connections with users, it undoubtedly helps build brand favorability and break product circles.

In the Double 11 spatial venue, Taobao collaborated with five brands—MAC, DJI, COLMO, Vidda, and Cheers—to create immersive spatial shopping scenarios. The head of the Vidda brand said, "In Taobao Vision, users can simulate the giant-screen viewing experience of Vidda laser projection in a real environment, projecting a 100-inch picture from just two meters away, while simultaneously feeling whether the projection product matches their home decor style. The larger and more three-dimensional display of Taobao Vision can also more intuitively present product capabilities."

It can be said that XR + e-commerce has opened a new paradigm for brand digitization and a new growth path. More immersive interactions and more accessible experiences will bring businesses new ways to establish user perceptions and new growth spaces.

Faced with new opportunities, many businesses may think in the future: I had no choice before, but now I want to be a… trendy brand that presents itself in a three-dimensional manner.

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For e-commerce, a good experience is the bottom line. No matter how e-commerce evolves, revolving around the user experience should be the core logic.

The first monograph to comprehensively reveal the laws of digital-physical integration, "Wet Economy," states that experience is the ultimate existence after eliminating the boundary between virtuality and reality, and the crux of experience lies in being "more attractive" and "more meaningful."

Taobao and Tmall have spared no expense in creating the only spatial e-commerce application with a self-developed engine and algorithm, returning to the "meta-logic" of experience.

Providing users with a more enjoyable online shopping experience through virtual strolls, 3D shopping, and grabbing 3D immersive red envelope rains, and giving businesses new growth opportunities, are annotations to being "more attractive" and "more meaningful."

To some extent, Taobao Vision has brought the Double 11 of years to come to us in advance.

In Kevin Kelly's writing, the future mirrored world is not a simple replication of the real world but is adorned with a gown woven from context, meaning, and function-driven elements, endowed with an unprecedented soul of interactive interoperability. The Double 11 spatial venue brings this sci-fi scene to life, showing people what "black technology" should look like.

In "The Truth About Technology," Ursula M. Franklin writes: Technology includes organizations, procedures, symbolic new vocabularies, equations, and, most importantly, a state of mind.

The brand-new version of Double 11 presents this state of mind by lifting the veil of "experience e-commerce" through black technology—a state of mind that is a blend of several vocabularies, such as exploration and innovation.