The supermarket of the future: Designing for humans
Coop Italia’s “supermarket of the future,” designed by Carlo Ratti, has won rave reviews, thanks to a digital design that created a more human shopping experience using a range of off-the-shelf technology. The concept, which debuted at Expo Milan last year and will be showcased at Micro- soft’s Envision conference this week, replaces the typical grocery store’s rows of towering shelves with an airy lay- out, including easy-to-reach, tilted displays and informative screens suspended at eye level. Motion sensors detect which product a shopper is pointing or
looking at, triggering visual displays of information such as ingredients, potential aller- gens, the origin or processing of the food, its carbon footprint, and even wine pairing recommendations. That’s exactly the sort of detail that consumers now see as a funda- mental pillar of their shopping experience – especially millennials who grew up with the Internet at their fingertips. Coop Italia hopes the concept will help it grow in an increasingly competitive marketplace where brick-and-mortar stores have struggled to engage with shoppers. “Customers now want access to everything there is to know about the products they are looking at,” says Gabriele Tubertini, Coop Italia’s chief information officer. “Take an apple, for example. They want to know what type of tree it grew on, the CO2 it pro- duced, the chemical treatments it received, and what its journey was to the supermar- ket shelf.” The large, easy-to-read screens providing that information mean shoppers don’t have to fumble with cumbersome devices, and older customers don’t have to get out their reading glasses. “It’s like a return to the old marketplace, where producers and consumers of food could easily interact with each other, exchanging stories and ideas,” Tubertini says. It’s a significant shift for the retailer as well. The system provides instantly updated in- formation on shelf inventory, allowing Coop Italia to keep goods in a store warehouse, rather than on shelves, until items need to be replenished. This design frees up valuable store space to make the most of famed architect Carlo Ratti’s redesigned aisles and food displays. It also shows in real time which items are popular and gives insight into how shoppers make decisions and move about the store, Tubertini says. And it identifies what information is relevant and useful for consumers, which is guiding Coop Italia’s interactions with its vendors.
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