Monthly Archives: May 2014

High-Tech Shopping

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Last week I spent a whole morning at a mega Sainsbury’s supermarket in Chingford, somewhere on the outskirts of East London. The British TV series, Gadget Man was filming content for a new show and they asked us if they could try out our lambent shopping handle.

The handle we designed is a minimalistic, mobile and fully functional display that clips onto supermarket shopping carts/trollys, intended to help people decide when choosing between which groceries to buy. It can be easily customized to provide salient information about the food dimensions people care about, such as salt content, fat content and food-miles. The latter are represented by varying lengths of a series of LEDs on the handle and a changing emoticon showing their total miles against a social norm. For example, scanning a packet of quinoa results in all 16 LEDs lighting up because it comes from multiple countries in Asia, whereas scanning a ready-made lasagne lights up only 3 of the LEDs, because it is made from Scottish beef. (Lambent by the way means having the property of moving lightly or flickering gently over a surface – which our handle does rather than being in your face.)

At a glance, a shopper can compare the same product for different brands, for example, two types of chocolate, bottled water or apples. The price might be the same, but the salt or sugar content or whether it has been locally sourced varies. While much of this information may be available on the food packaging it is often in small print or presented in such a way that it takes ages to find and can be confusing to the shopper. We make it compelling and easy to read off. Some might argue that smartphone apps do the same job. We showed empirically that this is far from the truth; they are often fiddly and tedious to use, and can overwhelm the shopper who is holding their phone in one hand, a product in the other while trying to scan it and navigate a complex store environment, usually in a hurry.

The lambent shopping handle was just one of several new gizmos being filmed intended to make shopping easier and more enjoyable. So, we got to watch Richard Ayoade (the british comedian, actor, writer and TV presenter) in the flesh for the whole morning act out various scenes with the latest gadgetry. When not being filmed, he sat or stood calmly in the store reading a book. He was happy to let me have my photo taken standing next to him. How cool is that?

richard aoyade
Our approach to enhancing shopping is to provide just enough information about certain product properties in order to help shoppers make more informed purchasing decisions. It is lightweight, playful and simple – enticing you to think rather than accept what others recommend. Quite different from much contemporary thinking about how we should use technology which promotes deciding for the user. For example, only this morning I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 about “Silicon Valley’s vision of local high-tech shopping”. The vision was same old, same old. An example of the future was of Jenny walking into a Burger Bistro, where upon her smartphone is recognized by the Point of Sales that then flashes up what she ate last time. The waiter on seeing her and the information about Jenny picks up a plate of fried sweet potato fries and takes it to her table saying in a cheery voice, “Hello Jenny, I thought you would like some of these again!” without asking her. This kind of personalized service is likened to ‘Rockstar treatment’. Just like Justin Beaver or David Beckham never have to decide or ask but always get the food they want. But sometimes even they might want change…

Whereas the likes of PayPal, eBay and other retail companies are pushing for more of this kind of personalisation in restaurants and stores, Isabelle Szmigin, a professor of marketing at Birmingham University, offered a refreshingly sceptical riposte, pointing out that just because Jenny ordered sweet potato fries one day, it does not mean she wants them every time she goes back to the same restaurant. While many of us maybe creatures of habit, most of us crave new experiences, tastes, products and surprises. We don’t want to be stuck with a Groundhog Day mindset. The model of personalized shopping based on your past experiences and purchases is set in the past. High tech retailing needs to break out of the automated recommender way of trying to please and nudge people. We can do much better when thinking of how to enhance shopping and dining experiences with technology.

A brand new Waitrose opened last month in Hove. It is the talk of the town (we have been waiting years for one) and it seems a destination in itself to visit judging by the line of cars queuing up for the car park. My fellow commuter regaled to me how it was the highlight of her weekend. She went with her chum on a Saturday afternoon and sat down at a table in the middle of the store (next to the wine section) and they both ordered a glass of house wine and some tapas. Whilst enjoying their repast, they merrily selected their shopping by tapping icons on a tablet, craftily positioned on their table. A minion then went on their behalf to do their shopping, that was ready for them to collect on their way out. No hassle, no queuing. There is a premium for this service but what a fun way to while away an hour – quaffing while doing online shopping in an actual bricks and mortar supermarket.

Cloud Talk

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glass_photos4-578-80Google Glass has been unleashed now for several months. Volunteer researchers are trying them out and developing a range of apps for them. Up until now I’ve only seen photos of people wearing them but last week there were several attendees wearing cool colored ones at the SIGCHI conference I was at in Toronto. It can be slightly unnerving when in their company as they look up and to the right to view what is on the glass screen rather than at you and into your eyes. As a result you might see more of the whites of their eyes than the usual interested dilated pupils. It could be the end of eye contact as we know it.

Meanwhile, there has been much debate in the press about the latest developments in facial recognition. NameTag, for example, is an app developed for Google Glass that takes a picture of the person you are talking with and then checks their online profile, providing a cloud of personal information about them, presumably mined from Facebook and other social media apps. So, you can find out more about someone on the go while talking to them – for example, what music they like, what films they have just seen, where they have just been on vacation, and so on – all in a digestible précis with a halo of photos around to boot. One could imagine that if this way of meeting up with others actually takes off, we may find ourselves in the situation where we wont need to talk to each other anymore. Just as text messaging has largely taken over from making phone calls for many people, ‘cloud talk’ could start taking over our initial encounters with people when we meet them at parties, at conferences, on trains etc. We might nod and smile in acknowledgement of each other but we wont ever have to have those awkward conversations anymore. A panacea for the shy? But how will we know what each other is looking at? You might think I am reading your blog or tweets when in your presence but really I might just be watching the latest updates of the football results and pretending to ‘meet you’.

scenetap Perhaps a more creepy development is the installation of cameras in bars in the US that are starting to use facial recognition. SceneTap, for example, uses it to provide information about the age and gender of people already in a bar to help others decide whether it has the right kind of people in it that they want to drop in. The thin edge of the digital voyeurism wedge?

PrintAt the conference I was at some of my researchers attended a hackathon where, with a team of others, they set up a hoax service called the quantifiedtoilets.com giving a new twist to surveillance in public places. They placed signs up in the restrooms in the convention centre we were at saying they were capturing toilet behaviour for real-time data and health analysis. They claimed furthermore to be working with local businesses, building owners, and local officials to improve the health and efficiency of individual buildings, neighborhoods, and entire cities. To achieve this, they purported to be analyzing “the biological waste process of buildings to make better spaces and happier people. We use this data to streamline cleaning crew schedules, inform municipalities of the usage of resources, and help buildings and cities plan for healthier and happier citizens.” The data they collected from each individual toilet , which they then revealed as stats for each toilet in the building, included the amount deposited, the odor, blood alcohol level, and any drugs, infections and even pregnancy detected. For example, a fresh urine deposit in the far end toilet on the 7th floor might have revealed that a recent occupant was female, had a blood alcohol level of 0.3% and was pregnant.

Not surprisingly, lots of people tweeted and blogged about this latest development. Many took it at face value and were shocked and outraged at such an invasion of public privacy. Which is what the researchers were interested in. There was also lots of coverage in the press, including Wired, the Washington Post and the Atlantic. It was only later that it dawned on people that it was a hoax – a thought experiment intended to get people to debate. And it surely did.

But do keep an eye on those advanced Japanese toilets that already have a set of mindboggling functions. You never know, they might just start adding a few more sensors and a webcam in the bowl.