If We Paid For Everything Like We Do For Uber and Lyft
Brick-and-mortar shopping requires entering a store, finding items in-stock, selecting items you want, placing them in a bag/cart, standing in a line, having items counted and totaled, transferring money to the company via a clerk that can handle one customer at a time, going through the metal detectors checking for people who haven’t paid, and shuttling all of your new items home in your car. This experience is often plagued by insufficient/unwanted stock, insufficient checkers to handle check-out demand, and inefficient payment systems. The same task sequence, viewed in a higher level of task abstraction is: provide a large available stock, select products, confirm purchase (perhaps implicitly), have money transferred (perhaps automatically), and receive product (if you don’t already have it).
The above picture is from IKEA in Emeryville, CA. Pretty much any day you go there you can see the same experience. None of these customers want to be where they are, and most of them are unhappy. They are also held captive in this state for roughly 15–20 minutes. IKEA might argue that this is a “captive audience” — meaning that they don’t have other places they can or will go. These people have already spent significant time selecting their items, so they aren’t likely to leave. IKEA has also conveniently designed their stores so that you can’t see the checkout lines when you enter the store, so you don’t know there will be a wait until after you have already invested the effort. (In another customer-antagonistic move, the San Diego IKEA used to block all shopping carts from exiting into the parking lot, which resulted in near-riots over the limited number of loading-spots for cars.)
Not being able to see the check-out lines when you enter is clever, because I have walked out of Target stores after entering and seeing the line, and deciding I don’t really need the thing I came for THAT bad. I have heard the same thing from other people. Increasingly furniture purchases are happening via Amazon — cheap prices, better range of styles, no assembly, no waiting in lines. Unhappy customers will eventually be provided other options and move to them in-mass. Look at BlockBuster.
Some businesses, particularly in protest-friendly San Francisco, proudly proclaim themselves “cash-only”. They pride themselves on avoiding taxes and forcing customers to leave the line to go “get real money or go elsewhere.” While ordering a sandwich at a family run restaurant in SF recently I tried to pay with a credit card. The sign clearly said “cash only on Thursdays”, but it was a Friday. She looked at the credit card in my hand and said “It’s easier for me if you pay cash.” I looked at her and said “Yes, but it’s not for me.” This type of attitude towards customers is really shameful for a city that boasts a culinary scene and a high-tech culture. It also clearly isn’t in-line with the trends in technology, automation, speed, and security. The Darwinian selection process is likely to weed out these neo-Luddite business owners over time unless they choose to adapt.
Sometimes the best product ideas come from envisioning an amazing scenario, with clear value to customers, which you have no idea how to build. In line with that thought-experiment, imagine a world where literally everything did not require explicit payment and entry and exit was seamless. Here are a few scenarios to explore this concept.
Standard-Scenarios: (these are less controversial and many of them already exist in some format)
• You walk into a supermarket, put the things you want in your backpack, and walk out the door. Payment happens automatically and you are emailed a receipt.
• You walk into an Apple store, pick up the item you want off a shelf, and walk out the door.
• You get on a train, ride to the stop you want, get off, and are billed wirelessly.
• You drive over a toll bridge without stopping, and your account is deducted the appropriate amount via your license plate registration. (San Francisco had to move to this to reduce traffic-jams across the bridge due to people paying with cash.)
• You walk directly into the sports stadium, the entire crowd entering is security-scanned in parallel from a distance, and you go get a seat.
• You reserve a seat at the movie theater for a given date and then walk in to sit just before the movie without stopping to be scanned.
• You choose the salad or coffee you want from a restaurant, select it via your mobile app, are billed electronically, and then walk in to the restaurant a few minutes later and pick up your food which is waiting with your name on it.
• You walk into a restaurant, order food from the waiter, eat, and get up and leave.
• You park your car in a parking spot, get out, and walk to your destination. You are later electronically billed for the amount of time you used.
• You reserve a bike at a share-station near you, pick up your bike, use it for as long as you like, and get billed for the time you use until it is returned.
Edgy-Scenarios: (these are intended to find limits for the technology, social-acceptability, user-control, privacy, etc.)
• The government tracks your finances and then deducts your taxes automatically each year. You are sent a receipt afterwards. If you wish, you can elect to approve the total and make minor modifications, or contest the total, prior to it being withdrawn from your account.
• You go to the doctor and don’t show any ID as you enter. You are told how much things will be, get treated, and your medical bills are automatically deducted from a checking account and a bill sent to your electronically.
• You go to the airport without a reservation, and get on the next available plane with space remaining to Tokyo, and are billed when you arrive.
• You are traveling internationally. You never have to get local currency. You tap your watch on a reader to pay for anything you encounter (this is basically already true in Finland). If you bargain for an item at a kiosk in Beijing, you can enter the agreed-upon amount into your watch and then choose to transfer it to the business owner.
• You enter a restaurant with 8 co-workers for lunch. You walk out without talking to the waiter at the end, and are each charged for your meals separately.
• You walk into a bar and sit down in a typical bar-stool/counter format. You order well-drinks, wine, or beer from a touch screen set into the counter-top. Your age is checked digitally at the same time as your payment account is identified (transparently to the user). A small conveyor belt similar to a sushi-train setup delivers your drink after it is made by a machine in the back room. This process takes roughly a minute total for simple drinks. Hand-crafted cocktails are still made by a bartender behind the bar, who also keeps an eye on the automation. Billing happens transparently, and you can either click a button to review your bill before you leave, or simply leave. No wait to order, no wait to get your beverage, no wait to pay, and no line to enter the bar — if they scale the number of seats to satisfy peak periods.
The above scenarios illustrate how the act of “paying for things” could become an automated and largely transparent activity, subject to personal preferences around the degree of review and confirmation desired. The vast majority of waiting and lines that are associated with various products and services stem from the need to manually pay for them. Additional delays in the task flow (such as the time needed to make your coffee) can be mitigated by pre-ordering or allowing customers to wait in more comfortable locations than standing in lines. Online retailers such as Amazon have long-ago removed the hassle of paying with “one-click” ordering and the process feels more like “select and it magically arrives later.” Brick-and-mortar stores have yet to realize they could do a similar thing for in-person customers.
Designers: What experiences are you designing that have unnecessary payment steps and manual processing? How could these be removed?
Originally published at www.uxoftravel.com.
