Design consultancy Berg has come up with a fascinating concept that neatly ties together the digital and analogue aspects of retail outlets. With so much consumer confusion and apathy towards NFC, perhaps it’s time to take another look at improving what’s already there and in use? Guy Daniels reports.
So it’s not real, merely a design concept, but we at TelecomTV think it should be implemented immediately – Paper Apps. We all get given a paper receipt every time we make a purchase at a retail store, yet the vast majority of us don’t even look at it and throw it away as soon as possible. What a waste of paper and a wasted customer service opportunity. How about making these receipts more relevant?
That’s exactly what the team at Berg have done. As part of a commission for Icon magazine, Berg has built on its ‘Media Surfaces’ research it did for Dentsu.
Take the humble point of sale cash till, give it Internet access, add social media intelligence, then see how it can transform a paper receipt into a meaningful data display. Berg’s Matt Jones talks through one example:
“The receipt includes a mayorship notification from Foursquare and three breaking headlines from the Guardian news feed. It turns the world of ticket machines, cash registers and chip-and-pin machines into a massive super-local, personalised system of print-on-demand machines. The receipt remains as insignificant and peripheral as it always has, unless you choose to read it.”
Nifty way of thinking, and something that could just well catch on. So who’s going to take up the challenge? Here’s more from Matt Jones to encourage developers to get cracking with this right now:
“We’ve added semi-useful info-visualisation of the foods ordered based on ‘what the till knows’ – sparklines, trends – and low-tech personalisation of information that might be useful to regulars. Customers can select events or news stories they are interested in by ticking a check box. We think the humble receipt could be something like a paper ‘app’ and be valuable in small and playful ways.”
Read more in this month’s Icon magazine.
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