7 ms·
The Walgreens down the street from me did this. For a month after they installed them, the whole wall of fridges was offline (warm inside and no product loaded)
by jimrandomh 5y ago
The Walgreens down the street from me did this. For a month after they installed them, the whole wall of fridges was offline (warm inside and no product loaded), during which time I found other stores and stopped checking. Then when they were finally working, the user experience was pretty bad. In theory, what's supposed to happen is that when you're far away it shows you a giant-font indicator of what's inside, or an ad, and then when you get close, a motion sensor detects that you're there and replaces the display with a map of the contents, that's kind of like looking through glass.
The problem is that the motion sensor coverage area is too small, and the transition to map view is too slow, so you wind up standing in front of an opaque screen that's supposed to be showing you what's inside, but isn't. Then it's faster to open the door than it is to wait for it to change, so you wind up opening the door, searching for the product you wanted with the door open, and wasting a bunch of energy.
- phinnaeus 5y agoIt's already wasting a bunch of energy by simply being there, displaying whatever.
- danuker 5y agoIt could be that the fridges behind the screens are better insulated than transparent ones. But having to open them to see what's inside certainly makes it cost more.
- quintushoratius 5y agoIt's quite likely that the screen generates a lot of heat that it's pushing back into the cooler. It's probably more than would have been absorbed from ambient. So now you're paying twice for energy: once for the display, and again in increased refrigeration costs.
- chaostheory 5y agoMy experience is the same. It does eventually show you what’s inside, but it’s not faster than just opening the door. I think something like AR would make a better experience.
- hef19898 5y agoOr somethong transparent. I propse glass until we figured out transparent aluminium or force fields.
- analog31 5y agoIt turns out that making a digital display work as well as human vision is a monumental technical challenge. For instance the makers of microscopes have only begun making research quality microscopes where you actually want to use the digital display instead of the eyepieces, for "difficult" specimens.
- BbzzbB 5y agoThat and eye tracking to data mine shoppers' gazes for the benefit of marketing departments (and Cooler Screens) to optimize displays. Truly an "exciting" customer experience. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/walgreens-tests-new-smart-coolers/581248/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/walgr...
- reustle 5y agoI wonder if folks will start stickering these cameras in protest
- Talanes 5y agoAt least yours appears to be trying to do something. The Walgreens that have them around here just have the screen on a static display of drinks (about half of which are actually there when you open it.)
- _ea1k 5y agoI wondered why people hated them so much as the description in the article seemed decent. It even seemed like it could work ok if the screen layout were efficient. Thanks for clarifying that its not just a solution in search of a problem but a really horribly implemented solution. Now I get it.