Curiosity Abounds

Kroger Digital has quarterly hackathons, which always prove fun and competitive. Every team I participate with has won accolades at the presentation ceremonies. I’m proud of that track record, especially given the number of hackathons we’ve done so far. This particular project had our audience applauding halfway through our presentation. You’ll see why in a moment.

Imagine a mobile app that could compare prices of products, on-self, in real time, anywhere, via your smart phone’s live camera feed. Thanks to augmented reality, we have the technology! This is my prototyped design of what that UX could look like on device, but the team of developers actually programmed and demoed the software. It is pretty amazing. #pauseForApplause

Our team went on to imagine what else augmented reality could do for Kroger customers. Scan the store with your device’s camera to see special offers, literally, around the store.

Dugout Defender started as a sketch, when we decided to continue with sport centric game development. I would go on to illustrate, design, code and lend voice acting to the final project, while directing animators for sprite art. We had a lot of fun!

I coded the game in Adobe Flash, which now offers exporting to nearly every major platform. It can be played in any browser with Adobe Flash installed and on the iPhone, via download. It could be ported over to Android and RIM platforms, but the desire wasn’t there..

An still image from the animated opening. The basic premise here is that an opposing team becomes irate upon losing to the Cincinnati Reds. Mr. Redlegs himself must defend our player and dugout from the approaching horde. He’s very vocal during gameplay.

The Milwaukee Brewers attack in the first level. Wait… Multiple levels? Boss battles? Custom commentary by Mr. Redlegs, pending on how you play? That’s right! A fun game, that actually proves quite challenging.

Kroger Digital has quarterly hackathons, which always prove fun and competitive. This time, we decided to experiment with natural language processing. I mean, the data speaks for itself.

We started our presentation with genuine customer complaints, which built our case for natural language processing being the best solution. Pairing each grievance with a Emoticon helped illustrate their points quickly and humorously.

Answering tomorrow’s questions, like “what’s for dinner?” This phrase was said, easily, fifty times by our corporate executives during Kroger’s all-hands meeting that year. Everyone in the audience laughed when they saw this slide and mobile app mockup.

You might be surprised at just how worried people are about customers finding new products on a grocery e-commerce platform. It’s a legitimate concern, but with natural language processing customers just have to ask what’s new.

Making a shopping list associated with UPCs by talking to your smart phone is the Holy Grail to online grocery stores. We are almost there.

Again, my team won accolades at the presentation ceremony. Even running into complications with the programmers’ demo, my presentation and UX/UI design was enough to win the day.