Field Research...Part 1

I stowed away to the front of Whole Foods a couple times, parking myself at a bar table and taking notes. 

See for yourself

Here, I recorded instances where the check-out counter is a real ergonomic issue- particularly at the end of the process when a customer/cashier is bagging the groceries.

This is what I noted, when I, myself, went through the check-out line.

-Moving groceries is a time suck- it's what contributes to the wait.

-The checkout of purchases can be broken down into 6 steps.

1) Groceries are taken out of the cart & loaded onto the belt

2) Groceries travel down the belt to the scanner

3) Groceries are scanned/weighed/etc

4) Groceries rolled down a corral to the bagging area

5) Groceries are bagged.

6) Bags are put back into the cart.

This highlights areas of redundancy; places that add time & energy to a customer's wait & a cashier's job. 

I can easily see technology pushing us forward past the steps of putting our groceries on the conveyor belt & it rolling down towards the bagging area, presenting a more efficient situation, like this:

Essentially, if the checkout process is simply the point at which the store bills you for your purchases and records inventory data, then it should require nothing more than that. A simple swish over a scanner, a tap of a credit card, and off you go!