5 ms·

Here's my opinion: What she got right - see items within categories from most expensive category to least, each category showing a percent of your total groce

Here's my opinion: What she got right - see items within categories from most expensive category to least, each category showing a percent of your total grocery bill - see relative price within a category at a glance (even if you buy wine, that's within your alcohol category, so it won't mess up the relative pricing of your dairy or snacks) What might not go so well - the bubble chart is less universal and intuitive (and it's "quirky") - does volume (of what's printed) matter for thermal printing costs? - would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items, because it does print as you scan.) Many people mentioned digital/CSV breakdowns. I know Home Depot quietly connected my credit card to my email address after asking me if I wanted a digital receipt, and I typed in an email. So this seems like a reasonable option, for anyone that grants permission. (Home Depot annoys me because I say "Yeah! E-mail me!" and then they hand me a receipt anyway. Ungh!)

octocode 8y ago
The print volume matters. These new receipts would be at least 3x longer than they need to be, and thermal paper: a) costs money b) is considered to be highly toxic c) often isn't accepted by local recycling programs (but people still throw receipts in anyway) d) ultimately end up in the garbage, or even just littering street corners.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  More importantly, it doesn't solve the larger problem of "where did my money go?" since that usually is asked over a timeframe of more than one shopping trip. The question is usually "How did I spend $100 more this month on groceries than i budgeted?" and the only way to answer that is analyze all of the spend together
- x2f10 8y ago
  >The print volume matters. Yes. There are some good ideas here that would be nice in practice. I like the categories and the fact items within that category are organized by price. However, IMHO, the bar chart and bubble charts are useless. These will only add to the cost, time, and confusion. Heck, most here don't even understand it. Where is the cost per lb information (for the meat)? That's useful.
  - tetra_proxy 8y ago
    I'm a person who understands things best visually. For me the bubble chart was pointless but the bar chart is very useful.
- ac29 8y ago
  > b) is considered to be highly toxic Do you have a source for that? It seems many thermal papers have BPA, but "highly toxic" seems like a bit of a stretch. If you have a study that shows adverse health effects in cashiers (or other populations) who handle these papers frequently, please share it. edit: Just to clarify, when I think highly toxic, I think of things like Radium Jaw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_jaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_jaw
  - octocode 8y ago
    I'm really no expert on the whole BPA thing, and I've read a lot of mixed research about it. I say "considered" toxic because of some of the research that has come out about it. I think ultimately we're not totally sure of the impact it has on health. There are quite a few studies done on this so far but none are particularly conclusive. Here's one relating to cashiers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824622/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824622/ And a more generalized one relating to factory workers who produce products containing BPA (like thermal paper): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634705/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634705/ It seems the government of France is also taking a stance against the use of thermal paper in the EU. There have been some concerns about BPA levels in groundwater, too, but this would be from all sources of BPA that end up in landfills, not just thermal paper. Calling it "highly" toxic might not be entirely accurate when compared to something like radium, but one of the issues with BPA is we're not entirely sure of the health impacts. As a hormone disruptor, it seems to manifest in undetectable ways (links to heart disease, infertility, etc.) so it may be hard to pin down the effects of exposure until enough historical data has been gathered. According to Health Canada (my country) 92.7% of their sample population had BPA concentrations in blood, a number that actually increased in the 7 years after it was banned from consumer products. (https://globalnews.ca/news/3694669/bpa-blood-samples-common/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3694669/bpa-blood-samples-common/) I'm also not trying to call for an immediate ban on it or anything like that, but merely stating that creating more of it without solving this problem is probably not a great idea.
- maemilius 8y ago
  > The print volume matters. Someone tell CVS. I don't think I've gotten a receipt from them shorter than a foot in length.
  - thomasjudge 8y ago
    I was going to make the same comment about CVS
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    That's one of the reasons why I tend to avoid CVS.
  - astura 8y ago
    For non-Americans, this is not an exaggeration... https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/10/17956950/why-are-cvs-pharmacy-receipts-so-long https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/10/17956950/why-are-cv...
    - JohnFen 8y ago
      That article is interesting. It says: > If you, a non-loyal shopper, mosey into CVS and buy some Tylenol and a package of seasonal candy, you will get a receipt that is unspectacular (read: a normal length). However, that's never been my experience. If I buy a pack of gum in a CVS, I'll get an insanely long (although not five-feet long) receipt for it even though I certainly am not a member of any CVS affinity program or anything.
- erdo 8y ago
  > 3x longer I used to work for a large payment processing company that supplied POS systems to retailers, I was surprised to find that receipt length does matter a lot to some retailers. The department that shipped till rolls liked long receipts, it made enough of a financial difference to them to matter. The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed to buy more till rolls. (It's worth remembering that the customers for most POS solutions are retailers, not the person who buys something in a shop)
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    I don't think retail customers prefer longer receipts, either.
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    > I was surprised to find that receipt length does matter a lot to some retailers. Why did this surprise you? It's what I would have expected. I also expect that customers like overly long receipts just about as little as retailers.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed to buy more till rolls. Changing out the printer roll is very annoying as well, for a retailer's cashiers. It's slightly time consuming and it doesn't always go smoothly. It inevitably results in a customer having to wait longer, slowing the checkout process further. The less often that action is needed to be performed, the better.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mfatica 8y ago
> because it does print as you scan I'm in the midwest and I've never seen this anywhere
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  That's the way older cash registers worked. It hasn't been commonplace for a couple decades for big retailers. POS terminals without screens need to let the cashier review mistakes so they can be corrected.
camtarn 8y ago
Receipt printers in the UK universally print at the end of the checkout process. They're very fast - it only takes a few seconds to print a receipt about a foot long. In addition, some supermarkets have a secondary printer which prints colour coupons at the same time at a similar speed. So, I don't think it would be a big slowdown.
RussianCow 8y ago
> - would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items, because it does print as you scan.) Most (all?) stores I go to print the receipt at the end of checkout, and it takes maybe 3 seconds at most, so I don't think that's an issue. I would also be concerned that the longer receipt length means that people will be less likely to actually read it. (I know I personally tend to gloss over really long/verbose receipts, but I take the time to look at ones that are more densely packed. Maybe that's just me though.)
- teej 8y ago
  It takes 3 seconds to print because it doesn’t include any complex rendering (like a dynamic bubble chart) or need full state to determine how to print it. This design challenges a lot of assumptions that the current generation of receipt printers use.
  - delinka 8y ago
    That's the computer's problem, not the printer's. If rendering time really becomes an issue, it can start the rendering process while the humans are twiddling about with card reader terminals and making small talk.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    The rendering itself isn't that large of a task and it'd all be done on the POS which has more than enough power to draw a couple circles. There's very little processing done on a thermal printer basically it's just decoding and drawing exactly what the source system tells it to. At most I'd expect it to add a second or two for the POS to do the calculations and send it to the printer.
  - rubatuga 8y ago
    The print time is proportional to the number of lines with pixels
    - 8y ago
philsnow 8y ago
> would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items, because it does print as you scan.) print the bubble chart at the end of the receipt, job done
zitterbewegung 8y ago
I said this on the other thread but I think the bubble chart should be moved to the back or below. The primary use of a receipt is auditing if they made a mistake and this design makes it harder to do so.
paxys 8y ago
I haven't come across a register that did print as you scan in like a decade now, even in the smallest of stores.

octocode 8y ago

The print volume matters. These new receipts would be at least 3x longer than they need to be, and thermal paper: a) costs money b) is considered to be highly toxic c) often isn't accepted by local recycling programs (but people still throw receipts in anyway) d) ultimately end up in the garbage, or even just littering street corners.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
More importantly, it doesn't solve the larger problem of "where did my money go?" since that usually is asked over a timeframe of more than one shopping trip. The question is usually "How did I spend $100 more this month on groceries than i budgeted?" and the only way to answer that is analyze all of the spend together
x2f10 8y ago
>The print volume matters. Yes. There are some good ideas here that would be nice in practice. I like the categories and the fact items within that category are organized by price. However, IMHO, the bar chart and bubble charts are useless. These will only add to the cost, time, and confusion. Heck, most here don't even understand it. Where is the cost per lb information (for the meat)? That's useful.
- tetra_proxy 8y ago
  I'm a person who understands things best visually. For me the bubble chart was pointless but the bar chart is very useful.
ac29 8y ago
> b) is considered to be highly toxic Do you have a source for that? It seems many thermal papers have BPA, but "highly toxic" seems like a bit of a stretch. If you have a study that shows adverse health effects in cashiers (or other populations) who handle these papers frequently, please share it. edit: Just to clarify, when I think highly toxic, I think of things like Radium Jaw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_jaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_jaw
- octocode 8y ago
  I'm really no expert on the whole BPA thing, and I've read a lot of mixed research about it. I say "considered" toxic because of some of the research that has come out about it. I think ultimately we're not totally sure of the impact it has on health. There are quite a few studies done on this so far but none are particularly conclusive. Here's one relating to cashiers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824622/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4824622/ And a more generalized one relating to factory workers who produce products containing BPA (like thermal paper): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634705/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5634705/ It seems the government of France is also taking a stance against the use of thermal paper in the EU. There have been some concerns about BPA levels in groundwater, too, but this would be from all sources of BPA that end up in landfills, not just thermal paper. Calling it "highly" toxic might not be entirely accurate when compared to something like radium, but one of the issues with BPA is we're not entirely sure of the health impacts. As a hormone disruptor, it seems to manifest in undetectable ways (links to heart disease, infertility, etc.) so it may be hard to pin down the effects of exposure until enough historical data has been gathered. According to Health Canada (my country) 92.7% of their sample population had BPA concentrations in blood, a number that actually increased in the 7 years after it was banned from consumer products. (https://globalnews.ca/news/3694669/bpa-blood-samples-common/ https://globalnews.ca/news/3694669/bpa-blood-samples-common/) I'm also not trying to call for an immediate ban on it or anything like that, but merely stating that creating more of it without solving this problem is probably not a great idea.
maemilius 8y ago
> The print volume matters. Someone tell CVS. I don't think I've gotten a receipt from them shorter than a foot in length.
- thomasjudge 8y ago
  I was going to make the same comment about CVS
- JohnFen 8y ago
  That's one of the reasons why I tend to avoid CVS.
- astura 8y ago
  For non-Americans, this is not an exaggeration... https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/10/17956950/why-are-cvs-pharmacy-receipts-so-long https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/10/10/17956950/why-are-cv...
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    That article is interesting. It says: > If you, a non-loyal shopper, mosey into CVS and buy some Tylenol and a package of seasonal candy, you will get a receipt that is unspectacular (read: a normal length). However, that's never been my experience. If I buy a pack of gum in a CVS, I'll get an insanely long (although not five-feet long) receipt for it even though I certainly am not a member of any CVS affinity program or anything.
erdo 8y ago
> 3x longer I used to work for a large payment processing company that supplied POS systems to retailers, I was surprised to find that receipt length does matter a lot to some retailers. The department that shipped till rolls liked long receipts, it made enough of a financial difference to them to matter. The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed to buy more till rolls. (It's worth remembering that the customers for most POS solutions are retailers, not the person who buys something in a shop)
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  I don't think retail customers prefer longer receipts, either.
- JohnFen 8y ago
  > I was surprised to find that receipt length does matter a lot to some retailers. Why did this surprise you? It's what I would have expected. I also expect that customers like overly long receipts just about as little as retailers.
- adventured 8y ago
  > The retailers hated long receipts, because obviously that meant they needed to buy more till rolls. Changing out the printer roll is very annoying as well, for a retailer's cashiers. It's slightly time consuming and it doesn't always go smoothly. It inevitably results in a customer having to wait longer, slowing the checkout process further. The less often that action is needed to be performed, the better.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

mfatica 8y ago

> because it does print as you scan I'm in the midwest and I've never seen this anywhere

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
That's the way older cash registers worked. It hasn't been commonplace for a couple decades for big retailers. POS terminals without screens need to let the cashier review mistakes so they can be corrected.

camtarn 8y ago

Receipt printers in the UK universally print at the end of the checkout process. They're very fast - it only takes a few seconds to print a receipt about a foot long. In addition, some supermarkets have a secondary printer which prints colour coupons at the same time at a similar speed. So, I don't think it would be a big slowdown.

RussianCow 8y ago

> - would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items, because it does print as you scan.) Most (all?) stores I go to print the receipt at the end of checkout, and it takes maybe 3 seconds at most, so I don't think that's an issue. I would also be concerned that the longer receipt length means that people will be less likely to actually read it. (I know I personally tend to gloss over really long/verbose receipts, but I take the time to look at ones that are more densely packed. Maybe that's just me though.)

teej 8y ago
It takes 3 seconds to print because it doesn’t include any complex rendering (like a dynamic bubble chart) or need full state to determine how to print it. This design challenges a lot of assumptions that the current generation of receipt printers use.
- delinka 8y ago
  That's the computer's problem, not the printer's. If rendering time really becomes an issue, it can start the rendering process while the humans are twiddling about with card reader terminals and making small talk.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  The rendering itself isn't that large of a task and it'd all be done on the POS which has more than enough power to draw a couple circles. There's very little processing done on a thermal printer basically it's just decoding and drawing exactly what the source system tells it to. At most I'd expect it to add a second or two for the POS to do the calculations and send it to the printer.
- rubatuga 8y ago
  The print time is proportional to the number of lines with pixels
  - 8y ago

philsnow 8y ago

> would waiting to print the receipt at the end cause a big slowdown vs printing as you ring items up? (I believe with most current systems, items can be added and removed, and they show up as 'add' and 'remove' line items, because it does print as you scan.) print the bubble chart at the end of the receipt, job done

zitterbewegung 8y ago

I said this on the other thread but I think the bubble chart should be moved to the back or below. The primary use of a receipt is auditing if they made a mistake and this design makes it harder to do so.

paxys 8y ago

I haven't come across a register that did print as you scan in like a decade now, even in the smallest of stores.