Prepare to step into the future of retail with IMAGR’s SmartCart, a collaboration with Blender. Powered by advanced technology and designed for simplicity, SmartCart redefines grocery shopping. Experience the seamless convenience of SmartCart as it enhances your shopping journey and sets a new standard in retail.
EXPERTISE
- Industrial Design
- Prototyping
IMAGR came to us with the idea of SmartCart, an image recognition solution designed to eliminate queues at checkouts. They needed assistance conceptualising their system and fitting it to a shopping trolley in a compact manner. To better their chances, IMAGR needed to solve some design problems to pitch their solution to potential customers and investors. It was cool to bring our physical design skills to a team of AI / image recognition geniuses.
Blender was tasked to create proof of concept / working prototypes around existing hardware for IMAGR’s SmartCart. The team had only three weeks to deliver the prototypes ready for international demonstrations. We started by getting a complete understanding of the system, including how the software works. This thorough understanding helped us to quickly define key design requirements and constraints to inform our design decisions.
Throughout the process, Blender had to imagine and re-imagine the future of shopping, creating a vision for how SmartCart will exist in a physical sense. We had to examine environmental considerations around trolleys such as wear and tear, lifecycle and maintenance, and especially how they are stacked roughly in a real-life environment. We also explored security problems with the device and how to best facilitate ease of communication for both shoppers and operators through design semantics. How and where the product would get charged was also critically explored.
A delightful user-experience is always needed for a successful product so Blender explored human factors such as where someone can put their device on the trolley while shopping or where shopping bags can be placed so that groceries can be efficiently packed. From figuring out and learning about these constraints and issues, we created concept sketches to communicate our solutions and develop these into 3D models for prototyping.
Within a very short space of time, Blender was able to put together a presentable and clean concept package for IMAGR to present to customers and investors. In November 2017 IMAGR secured Sage Technologies Ltd as a cornerstone investor. Blender is excited to see the vision for the future of shopping trolleys and supermarket shopping come to life through IMAGR’s SmartCart.
