Adventures in Electrostatic

Our first group project in pComp this semester is about observation. Specifically, observing people interacting with technology. My parter and I, Jen, kicked around a couple places where we could observe people, and eventually came up with grocery stores. Markets are great because they are usually bustling and people are in a hurry; so the technology needs to work well and fast. For awhile we were interested in people and produce, then people and scales; but we settled on people and waiting in lines. Actually, we chose people and waiting in lines at Whole Foods Market in Union Square, because it has a very interesting line system. In an effort to get customers through the checkout process quickly and with limited space, Whole Foods developed an automated line system which utilizes a color coded digital display and recorded voices. It works like this: Customers bring their groceries to the checkout area where there is a block of five closely packed lines. At the front of the group of lines is a hanging digital plasma display with five colored columns on it. Above each line is another hanging object, a colored square, which is supposed to tell you what color your line is. So a customer stands at the front of the line waiting for a number to drop into ‘their’ colored column on the digital display. When a number falls into your column, you go to that register number… I know, complicated.

Jen and I thought the Whole Foods line machine would be a good place to observe people being confused by technology. We decided to make two trips to observe the line, one when Whole Foods was slow, and one when it was busy. It was important for us to not only record our subjective observations, but also some cold, hard, numbers. We did so by tracking user responses on a couple scales: nervousness, eye contact, confusion, etc. All our our ‘objective’ data for the two session can be found HERE.

Overall, the system worked well if the store was busy and people had time to wait in line and understand the system. On the other hand, if the store was slow, chaos ensued. Literally chaos. We spoke to Whole Foods employees (who were on line baby-sitting duty) who told us stories about fights breaking out and old ladies getting knocked to the ground, all because of the confusing line mechanism. On the slow day, we observed many people being confused, bypassing the system entirely, and thus pissing off the other line standers who are ‘in the know.’ Jen and I came to the conclusion that when the line is short, and people are in a hurry, obvious signs and instructions are simply not seen by customers; and when they are seen, seldom understood quickly. Fortunately though, with some simple redesigns, we think the whole system can be drastically improved. Easy changes like adding arrows and lowering hanging heights, we think, will make a big difference. We created a diagram explaining these simple modifications and the system on the whole, which can be found HERE.

I personally think the line system at Whole Foods Union Square is a good thing. Most of the time it works very efficiently (much better than Trader Joe’s’) and is interesting. And at times when it does not work well it should not be replaced or turned off, just modified a little. It is just a case of designers assuming too much.

Links:
Data
ReDesign
Jen’s Blog

Here is my artist for the class.

Eduardo Kac | ekac.org

Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his interactive net installations and his bio art. A pioneer of telecommunications art in the pre-Web ’80s, Eduardo Kac (pronounced “Katz”) emerged in the early ’90s with his radical telepresence and biotelematic works. His visionary combination of robotics and networking explores the fluidity of subject positions in the post-digital world. His work deals with issues that range from the mythopoetics of online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Genesis); from the changing condition of memory in the digital age (Time Capsule) to distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State); from the problematic notion of the “exotic” (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny). At the dawn of the twenty-first century Kac opened a new direction for contemporary art with his “transgenic art”–first with a ground more…

–Project Links–
Rara Avis (1996)
A-Positive (1997)