We all have been in a large store before shopping for groceries or any other household products. Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda you name it. Before I started shopping online, I used to make a list of what I needed and hurry to the closest store in my area. Then I started going round the store searching for the things in the list, often according to the order I wrote them down. Well, what if number one (milk) is at one end of the store and number 2 (olive oil) turns to be at the other end? This is simply waste of time. But hey, am I supposed to remember the location of each product and plan beforehand my shopping-route? Personally, I cannot memorise this kind of (unimportant) details neither can the majority of customers.
When you get to the store, you can start shopping in different ways. The “reasonable” ones I can think of are:
- My way!
Comment: You think are the best don't you? Around and around you go in circles.
- Take a look at every shelf in the store and put the things you need in the trolley as you move on to the next one.
Comment: Ok, so you went to 36 different shelves but you only got stuff from only 8. Great!
- Start whistling and go to random shelves until you have crossed out all the products in the list.
Comment: You are wasting your time (unless you don’t have work to do) and you are bothering other people too! Take a look around. You are not alone!
It’s a fact that nowadays increasingly more people switch to online shopping as it is much easier and quicker. That’s great for us and our parents, but what about the elderly people? Think of your grandparents. Did they ever use the internet? Do they know what online shopping is? People at this age will continue shopping the way they did 10 years ago. My idea is about finding a way to enhance their shopping experience and reduce the time needed to find all the products they want. This involves a multi-purpose e-trolley.
As an alternative to the traditional trolley, this new kind of trolley provides directions to a product or in the worst case, to the appropriate shelf. It also saves information about what products where looked-up in the past by the customer and group them together to provide the customer with a time-efficient shopping-route. The e-trolley will automatically recognise a customer by their fingerprint. The directions to a product or shelf are displayed on a 15” LCD monitor that is attached to the trolley. The monitor has memory and processor built-in and is has wireless connection to the store’s server which keeps a “map” of the store as well as the position of all e-trolleys. In this way, the customer is able to see their position in the store and the shelves around them.
The e-trolleys can certainly be useful for customers of all ages, but only the characteristics of elderly people will be taken into account for the design and implementation of this idea.
1 comment:
I personally find the e-trolley a great idea for reducing the amount of time people actually spend wondering in superstores in order to get what they want. Of course one could argue "Why not ask a shop-assistant?". Well the answer is as simple as this..sometimes even the shop-assistants won't go into the trouble of finding a product for you, especially after a long day at work.
Now when it comes down to the elderly people the importance of finding something without much trouble is vital.(for the reasons we can all imagine).
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