My project aimed at looking at the current state of local retail shopkeepers, the kiranawale, their expectations, traditional market system, the customers outlook towards this whole scene and propose appropriate services, scenarios, interaction of the same which will bring back customers, and thus help kiranawala increase their business and sustain the competition from organized retail.
As small to medium shops already have loyal customers because of their personalized service, the project focussed on how to provide them the opportunity and necessary innovative tools/devices to empower them to increase their customer base and profit margins. This could be done by reworking their business model, introducing small scale automation in their shops which in the long run would increase their profit margins. The difficult facet of such novel initiatives would be convincing small time traders to move away from the traditional model and adapt themselves to new technology products.
This innovative project aimed at developing a low cost retail management system which encompassed a host of services involving both hardware and software components. During this project, prototypes of such components were created and deployed on a small scale in selected shops to measure impact and possibilities like inventory management, billing, account management, collaborative social network of shops, etc.
I adopted a process wherein I started off by setting a goal and an initial brief followed by planning, domain understanding, data gathering, structuring, synthesising, analysing, ideation and concept generating, making iterations, finalising concepts, detailing concepts, initial prototyping and prototyping refining.
Through this project, I learnt a lot about interaction design, how the industry functions, what industry needs, the limitations, and working in constraints. I also learnt about upcoming technology and how it may be used for this project.
