Pravin Sathe - Long Form

Recently in application

Guided Grocery Shopping

I love going to grocery stores, particularly Whole Foods because I enjoy the experience of picking the fruits, vegetables, meat et al for my meal that night. But searching for items I find a bit tedious, particularly when I am in a rush. Ultimately, I end up asking an employee of the store where a particular item is located. Why isn't this information readily available before you set foot in the store.

If grocery stores create a database listing the location of an item in the store (an aisle number for instance) software developers could then build an application where a user submits the items they intend to purchase into a form and the app spits back the location of each item. What's more, if they have a blueprint of the store layout each item could be placed in it's correct position and the resulting map could be sent to the user. A little math and you could have the shortest possible distance to travel to pick up all of your items and checkout.

If that database also included price, the customer could request the total cost of all of the items in their grocery basket and compare the total cost across multiple stores.

All of these requests can be made from a mobile device either through a text message or via a website.

A project for the iPhone developer program?

Pravin has worked in fields ranging from pure science research to the arts, technology and education. He received his B.A. from New York University in Politics and Economics in 2003 and his M.P.S. from ITP @ NYU in 2008. He is currently exploring ideas that lie just below the surface of the images and objects we see and use everyday.