FFPI #7: Real Life Control + F (Find) Search Glasses
This FuncFash Product Idea arose this past weekend when I was shopping for cheese. I was invited to attend a dinner party and the host asked me to bring a bottle of wine and some cheese. I’m not very sophisticated when it comes to both of these items so I asked her what kind of wine and cheese to bring over. She asked me to bring a bottle of Syrah wine and this cheese called “Tomme de Savoie.”
Apparently this is what Tomme de Savoie looks like
The wine wasn’t going to be a problem, but the cheese was. My total cheese knowledge consists of: cheddar, swiss, American, and grilled…Tomme de Savoie wasn’t on my extensive list of “cheeses i know.” Either way I was sure it wouldn’t be a problem finding this cheese. Of course I was totally wrong.
I get to the grocery store and instead of going to the normal deli section where I normally get my sliced cheese for my salami sandwiches I went to the imported cheese section and was greeted by an overwhelming selection of cheeses I’ve never heard of. It looked something like this.
Tomme de Savoie like finding needle in a haystack
I was running late for the party which I was supposed to bring the wine and cheese so the thought of going through all of these cheese labels to find “Tomme de Savoie” was not appealing. But I started searching anyway.
Going through these cheeses was a time consuming process. As I was doing it I started thinking how much of a waste of time this was especially when you compare it to how I would find something online. If I was searching for something on a web page say “Tomme de Savoie” I would just hit “control + f” to bring up the find dialog box and type in “Tomme de Savoie.” Then my browser would find every instance of Tomme de Savoie and even highlight it on the page and take me to it when i click “find next.” As you can imagine searching this way is much more efficient than having to go and read through the entire web page.
The more I started thinking about the more angry I got. Why hasn’t someone invented “control find” in real life? Imagine how awesome it would be. Say you walked into Costco and you had to buy contact solution. These are your options for finding objects in the store:
- Roam around the store on your own
- Flag down an employee, ask them, and hope they know
Even if you know the general location where something is it still take find to find the exact location. This is where the Control Find Search Glasses would kick the pants off of traditional methods of finding stuff.
How it Would Work:
There were a couple of ways I was thinking this might work. One way was having built-in OCR (optical character recognition software) integrated into the glasses. The glasses then would scan text and try to find matches for what you are looking for. The problem with that is that you would always need a direct line of sight with the glasses and if something obstructed the view of the text it wouldn’t be included in the search results.
RFID Tag
The better way was to use RFID (remote frequency identification) tags on all the products on the store (maybe as a replacement for barcodes). For people who aren’t familiar with RFID tags these are little stickers which can transmit information wirelessly to a RFID reader. Companies are already using them in warehouses to track and manage inventory.
So the idea is to use RFID tags on the products and have the reader integrated into the search glasses. Then when you run a search through the glasses (voice activated and voice recognition) it will be able to search the store and locate the object you are looking for. To make it a little more high tech in the glasses you would see the object(s) highlighted and the distance to the object(s), Just follow the glasses and you’ll be taken to your object.
If we want to get fancier we could also have the glasses be able to take in lists of objects you want to buy and then route the most time efficient route to pick up those objects. It’s like GPS for your shopping trips.
Now my search for Tomme de Savoie would be as simple as inputting into my glasses and figuring out if I want to pay with cash or credit.
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