I'm currently staying in Tegefjäll in the north (ish) of Sweden.
It's very cold, and there aren't very many people around.
The way in which grocery stores (specifically the chain, ICA) have dealt with this is to offer unstaffed, digitally-accessed stores.
There is an 'ICA ToGo' store just around the corner from the apartment we are in.
To access it, you download the ICA ToGo app onto your phone.
You can then go to the store, once you're within 200m you can tell the store to unlock the front door via the app (the way the front door then swings open is quite fun, or ominous, depending on your disposition!).
Then you scan the barcodes of the items you want to buy as you go around the store, review your order, pay (either via Swish, a widely used Swedish payment method, or by card), unlock the front door via the app again, and leave.
It was an incredibly seamless, straightforward experience.
The design of the app was bulletproof, and the onboarding was very clear and effective.
I can see potential use for this approach in remote locations (the Highlands of Scotland immediately sprang to mind).
I could also imagine it being used by services in remote locations in addition to just grocery stores, such as libraries, cinemas, etc.
There are some social, ethical and cultural considerations to ponder.
There are issues of trust, surveillance, accessibility that would need addressing.
There are obvious ways to 'game' this approach and I suspect the fact that Sweden is a high-trust, high-conformity, very digital, almost cashless society probably makes this solution more viable here than it might be in other places (i.e. there is already a high level of familiarity with this type of solution here).
I am not suggesting that it is a replacement for staffed experiences, but in remote places where recruiting and paying staff isn't viable, this could be an alternative option (and, I would suggest, is better than no option at all).
I'm aware there have long been aspects of this type of experience present in other things (lots of stores now allow you to 'scan as you go', the Amazon physical stores used tech to work out what you were buying as you went so you didn't even have to scan, lots of places allow you to self-checkout, car subscriptions now often enable access via an app etc).
But this felt like a straightforward, well designed, practical, effective implementation of these ideas.
And I think that's always worth noting and unpacking.
Some considerations for the cultural sector:
- Onboarding to digital tools and services should be extremely obvious and straightforward. Users don't have time to learn your tools, digital solutions need to work in clear and predictable ways.
- The more usable a digital solution is, the more valuable it is. If the app had been rubbish, or the mechanics of the in store experience hadn't worked, or wifi was patchy, I wouldn't have bothered and it would've been confusing, frustrating, and required support. All the key aspects of this experience were joined up, reassuring, self-explanatory and competently executed.
- Aspects of this experience (unlocking the front door, the interaction when you scan each item) are quite playful. This added to the overall ease and enjoyment of what was otherwise a mundane daily chore (shopping for groceries).
- Self-service solutions are becoming more prevalent. Recent Indigo research has shown that audiences (in the UK at least) are very comfortable with/prefer this approach (in certain circumstances). These shifts will affect audience expectations of the service cultural organisations offer.
