161–170 of 262 posts
HN'ers asking why this isn't a cell phone app take note - this exemplifies why we (geeks) don't make good use cases for consumer tech and we should always be careful looking to our own habits and values when in a Product Development role. We're rarely the target customer and rarely behave like "average Joe". We're naturally resistant to superfluous redundancy ("My phone can already snap a barcode, I don't need a sepa…
I've been expecting Tesco (UK) to do this for ages. They have supermarkets literally operating on this sort of device, you scan+bag as you go, and they have a decent national delivery service.
I wonder if they tried it and found there are less opportunities to upsell so it doesn't pay off: If I'm only scanning products I have then where's the discovery and upsell?
They might even be able to get away with just giving you free stuff outright as a discovery method too, given the huge amounts of consumer behaviour data they must have — as long as their algorithms can predict you have a profitable% chance of reordering the item.
Listening to a young child carefully pronounce words for the narration was a bit distracting and slightly irritating. A sentence or so would be fine, but narrating the whole video was an exercise in patience. Or do I just have a cold, black heart?
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Yeah, but she doesn't want all the buttons from all the remotes moved to a single monstermote, she wants the TV remote to do everything as if the only thing connected was a TV. "Why do I have to choose channels on my TV AND cable/satellite box?" and "why are there multiple sound levels for the HiFi, TV, cable and DVD boxes?" are questions no one has adequately answered and they're questions everyone except geeks and…
What of Logitech's Harmony system? It works around the concept of activities. "Watch TV" - it asks initially, "What input is the TV set to?" "What remote do you use to control the volume?" "What remote to change the channel?" And from then on, it works. It doesn't cover all on your list, but it has the potential.
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Opening an app is, thankfully, something the tech industry has managed to train the average consumer to do. I'd argue though remembering where you put this thing, or "oh hey the wifi password got changed why isn't the food scanner working?" adds lots more complexity than hitting an app icon. The app route also enables you to have multiple scanners - since the target audience of such a product is probably already heav…
Respectfully, there's geek-thinking again. Wifi password changing is a straw-man argument - most households use the default SSID and password that came with the router (if you don't believe me go to a residential area outside of SF and see how many 2WireXXX or ATTXXXX SSID's there are) . Those that do set their own password never change it again. Apps enabling multiple scanners - again assumes multiple smartphone own…
I think people who think their phone can replace a dedicated barcode scanner should be forced to stand in a busy super market where all the checkout counters are forced to use an app to scan everything.
Number of steps to scan grocery by phone: 1. Find your phone 2. Unlock 3. Swipe left to home page three or maybe four 4. Visually scan for the AmazonFresh icon and tap 5. Wait for loading 6. Start scanning action 7. Confirm and pay Number of steps to scan grocery by Dash: 1. Get device from drawer or pantry 2. Press one button and scan 3. Confirm and pay For the target demo (30+, married, households with children), o…
Classic over engineering. "Number of steps to scan grocery by phone" Most people just use pencil + paper, or notepad/note app on phone. Never have I seen people actually use technology while shopping unless it's a typed out list.
And then possibly a text message. Of course, it goes from being 2 things to 10 things quickly. And then I'd have to deal with actually keeping the list orderly and constantly checking what I did have in the basket already (more difficult with 20+ items).
So, I wrote an app. It was funny, building a "twodo" app. But honestly, I just needed something that worked.
I mention all of this because it did start with trying to use what we already had.
Why would they make a device rather than an app to do this? Seems pretty awesome as a service though...if Amazon Fresh was available here.
Have you ever tried to scan barcodes with a cellphone? For anything other than some sort of "novelty" "let's trying this cool new QR hipster app" type of situation.
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Even if they hadn't expanded beyond Seattle, Seattle is their "home market" where lots of their employees live and a rather good market for a wide-availability grocer. Fred Meyer stores nor its QFC sibling hold a candle to any halfway-decent actual-Kroger from back home. Safeway is just Tom Thumb with a 20% markup. This isn't exactly the Dallas/Fort Worth grocery region, with 11 (yes, eleven) full-service grocery cha…
Here is my problem: it's been in this perpetual beta mode since 2007. At some point they should be done with all the market research there is to do and either go big or stop wasting resources on building gadgets for it.
Wait till a 2 year old gets ahold of it and scans everything 10 times.
Or are you simply being a model HN contributor and nitpicking any little thing that comes to mind?