Creative Exploration and Prototyping Project

Flash Shopper is a mobile app designed to provide customers who prefer physical store shopping with a newer, faster, and more leisurely way of performing an everyday task. The initial idea for this project, developed by a team of two, was to create an app which is able to navigate and help people to find products they wish to buy in supermarkets. We started by naming it Product Locator. While brainstorming and exploring the possibilities of indoor positioning system (IPS) technology, we started to expand our horizons. At this point we were aware that customers wouldn't use this app regularly and that there was no point to develop a one-off used app. What we have learned from our survey was that the worst time-wasting situations that customers experience usually are: searching for an item and not being able to find it, inaccessibility of staff for info, and queuing at the checkout counter. That led us to decide to build in more options for our customers.
Flash Shopper can locate products within a store and calculate the quickest way to get everything on a customer's shopping list.
Customers can create and edit their shopping lists at home. While creating lists, customers will be provided with information about the desired products including prices, offers, if some item is out of stock, or if its location has been changed. A shopping list will also calculate the exact amount a customer is going to spend.
Flash Shopper is also able to create and scan QR codes and barcodes, both for iOS and Android. While scanning products the app is generating the customers total amount in real time. Once the total amount is confirmed, the app will generate a QR code which can be used to pay the bill.
To expand our customer’s experience and make it more satisfying, Flash Shopper has an augmented reality mode integrated and it can switch from the map to the AR mode to guide customers through the store and help them find desired products.