February 8, 2008 Bags bags bags! It always seems like you’ve got too many bags…
The good folk at Adaptive Path had an interesting recent blog post on experience design and sustainability.
I’d like to add an item to their list of ideas:
Don’t punish users for making sustainable choices.
Case in point: I’m trying to stop using plastic bags right now. I have a nice roomy grocery bag of laminated canvas, that I take with me whenever I go to the grocery store. However, I almost always run into a problem when I try to use the self-checkout machines.
The checkout machine has a clear model of what it wants the user to do: take the item out of the basket or cart, scan it, and put it in one of the plastic bags next to the machine. My preferred way of operating is to take each item out of my bag, scan it, and then either set it aside or put it back in the bag. But if you deviate from the model in the slightest, you get beeped at, error’d, and scolded to no end. I’ve had one of the machines even tell me that I needed a cashier’s permission NOT to put my item in a plastic bag!
(I honestly don’t understand why they even bother to track this. I mean, you’ve already scanned the item, it’s already registered on your bill. Why do they care what people do with it afterward?)
Sure, all of this can be gotten around. That’s not the point. The point is that it adds friction, makes it harder and less pleasant to “do the right thing”.
Let’s flip this on its head and see how we could change the checkout machine to influence people to not use plastic bags.
First, ditch the bagging requirement (duh). Let people do what they want with their stuff, after they ring it up.
Secondly, keep track of how many plastic bags people are using, and display that. If you charge for them, as many places are starting to do, you could display a running total of how much the person would save by using their own bag — maybe even the total over a year, if they use a store card that can identify them. Or you could display something on resource use, or just a persistent reminder to please bring in your own shopping bag next time.
Like before, this all seems like fairly small stuff, but. Just as the small choice against using plastic bags can affect the larger environment, small design choices can affect the user, even to the point of guiding and shaping behavior. And that’s how interaction designers can encourage sustainability, in any system where the screen mediates real-world consumption.
Now then, if we could just get around to fixing public transit…
Bonus points to anyone who got the title reference.
I’ve had some issue with self-checkout, but reminding cashiers I don’t need or want a bag when I’ve brought my canvas bag or am buying one or two items I can carry out with my receipt is probably a more likely problem for me.
The self-check out machines I’m familiar with at least do have the plastic bag set up- which is bothersome from my perspective, but has the area to set down the groceries- the system, though large and spacious that I’m familiar with, is based on weight. The bags are superfluous, really. Your inconvenience probably arises in the period between taking your items out of your canvas bag and putting them back in it.
I’m not familiar with your particular interface in question, but you can try just ignoring the plastic bags and using the space alloted for weighing the products with or without your bag in hand, this should be convenient enough, but the sacrifice we make in using the preferred brought in bag is the presumed convenience in the inherent system- which I don’t mind giving up.
Good call at any rate, and I like your new rule.
Honestly, not having to buy truckloads of plastic shopping bags should save a grocery store in the long run, so reminders aren’t a bad idea.
Publix- as well as the local health food store here, Manna- sells bags now, but haven’t done away with plastic all together. Though I do hear that San Francisco has moved in that direction.
Comment by drew. — February 12, 2008 @ 4:47 pm
I have had a great deal of bag frustration in the last year… the self-checkouts being the least of them.
At least in Ithaca, I was spoiled by cashiers who would ask “do you need a bag for that” or not give me one unless I asked. But now and then when I was forced to visit a big-box store, they’d sneak my single item into a bag while I wasn’t looking, or while I looked on too bewildered to say anything! And once the bag is off the rack, I am loathe to say “oh I don’t need a bag,” as I fear that they will just throw that one out, whereas I will at least reuse and eventually recycle it.
Wegman’s baffles me–they have signs up all over now that say “DID YOU REMEMBER YOUR REUSABLE BAG?” But the standard cashier prompt is still “Is plastic okay?”
On one occasion, when I was buying a box of donuts and a carton of strawberries for my bar review class, I told the cashier “I don’t need a bag” as she scanned the donuts. She said “oh, okay,” then put the strawberries in a bag. *headdesk* I have learned that if I add extra, informationless words for emphasis (like “I don’t need a bag at all” or “I don’t need any bags”), cashiers are more likely to comply.
Comment by Andy — July 20, 2008 @ 7:43 pm