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WorldMart

Tangible interfaces for complex data

The world of product supply chains is complex and murky at best. Sometimes the producer of a product cannot know where their source materials come from. In an era where transparency is a pressing need, we think this is a problem. We wanted to stimulate conversation about this problem, and answer a few questions of our own: where does my food come from?

We collected some of the usual suspects from the local grocery store and began making some phone calls, sending emails, and filling out many "Customer Feedback" forms. After two months we collected our findings and prepared it for public presentation.

We setup a mock grocery store, complete with an in-counter barcode scanner. Visitors would grab a product from the shelf and scan it on our checkout stand. When a product is scanned the computer screen presents information about where the product is made and where its source materials are from.

We specifically chose barcode scanning as the interface because it is tactile and intuitive: we are familiar with the concept that a barcode is an index into some metadata about the thing that the barcode is attached to.

By exploiting this cognitive device we can suggest a possible future where that barcode is an index into a database of metadata which can inform us about the origins of the product, enabling us to choose products based on our values.

How would such a database come about? There are a few ideas beginning to emerge. An MIT project, Sourcemap.org, is exploring the idea that disclosure of product origins can be a competitive advantage in a new economy where product differentiation can be achieved by matching customer values with real-world praxis.

Perhaps, then, in the not so distant future we will be able to scan products with our mobile devices and decide to vote for sustainability by choosing the products which offer full disclosure when scanned.

 

Worldmart mock till, setup in the gallery

An example screen, this one is shown when the orange juice is scanned