How digitization is revolutionizing the retail market

A visionary view on the retail industry of the future

Understanding customer perspectives instead of just assuming them

Whether it's a vegan diet, a tight budget or allergies – the needs of supermarket customers are diverse and often hard for retailers to grasp. Designing the supermarket of the future takes more than just thinking about customers; you have to genuinely experience their perspective. Closing exactly that gap was the purpose behind the Innovative Retail Laboratory's (IRL) new premises.

DFKI

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is Germany's leading business-oriented research institution in the field of innovative software technologies based on artificial intelligence methods. One of the topics that the research center addresses together with various partners, including Centigrade, is the interaction between humans and machines. As a result, future-proof solutions are created that are intuitively understandable for users.

Gamification

UI Design

Prototyping

Simply change the perspective‑ retailers experience how their customers shop

What does the supermarket of the future look like? How will the potential of a networked society change the way people shop? The Innovative Retail Laboratory (IRL), which has its headquarters in the Globus Markt in Sankt Wendel, Germany, deals with these visionary questions.

Experiencing shopping from someone else's perspective

Using Augmented Reality, visitors of the IRL can experience shopping from different perspectives. In addition to a new color design, we also decorated the walls with informative data visualizations relating to retail and consumption. We also developed an app on a visionary idea of the IRL: In the spirit of Urban Gardening, residents can operate greenhouses jointly. With gamification elements, our app motivates residents to participate in watering, fertilizing, weeding and harvesting: Those who do more will increase their score – and become the hero of the neighbourhood, because the community benefits from short transport distances and always accessible, seasonal fruit and vegetables.