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Early 2020

Little Plant Pantry

In Amsterdam exists a tiny shop that sells their (edible) products in bulk. You bring your own container and fill it up with any of the available, mostly organic ingredients. For someone who dreams of a zero waste world, this place is heaven on earth, so I did some volunteering here to do my part in helping this gem survive among the powerful supermarket giants.

www.littleplantpantry.com

Let’s go shopping

To measure the net weight of a specific product, you need to weigh and write down the weight off the empty and full container and subtract the empty weight from the full weight. You’ve to do this for all your products and this process can get quite cumbersome and time consuming. When you’re ready to pay you hand in your written slip over to the cashier, who has to fill in the net weight in the system for every product in order to get a total. You can imagine this takes a lot of time and as a UX designer I couldn’t help but cook up a little app concept to help speed things up.

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype start screen

    You start by tapping the QR code icon in the search bar

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype QR code scan screen

    Scan the QR code of the product you want to buy

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype detail screen

    Fill in the container and total weight and the app calculates the net weight

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype detail screen - standard weights

    Select a configured standard weight If you always use the same containers

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype full basket

    After repeating this for all the products you click on the total to send it to the cashier

  • Little Plant Pantry prototype pay screen

    The cashier checks the list for errors, you pay and BAM! Done! Precious time saved!

Analog or digital?

I showed the concept to the owner and he loved and praised it, however, he also expressed a valid argument against it. He agrees that time is one of our most valuable resources, so why not save as much of it as possible? Well, he argued, the analog method forces you to slow down, take your time, be present and use your brain for once. A necessary break in an increasingly fast and digital world. And I must say, he does have a solid point. Yet despite his noble argument he would love to have this system in place, as it often gets very busy in the weekends and a little extra efficiency would make the shopping experience a lot more pleasant for everyone during these times.