Smart Mall in Dubai Metro

Situated at Union Dubai Metro station is the ‘Smart Mall’ by trolley.ae(this will open in a new window). Smart Mall is a wall-mounted screen displaying a virtual supermarket shelf that users can scroll through to select products to purchase.

The concept is not the first of its kind as similar interactions have been implemented around the world e.g. Tesco’s expansion into South Korea. In 2011, Tesco created a virtual store(this will open in a new window) by utilising billboards fitted with QR codes in subway stations that enabled users to scan products for home delivery while they waited for their trains.

How it works

The Smart Mall has developed this concept further with a fully interactive touchscreen wall. The application allows the user to select their items, placing them in their virtual basket for payment with a credit card. Items are then delivered to the users home. During our most recent visit to Dubai, Ed and I were able to interact with the concept first hand to see how the user experience faired.

Our experience

Firstly, approaching the platform was slightly unnerving due to the sheer size of the screen, towering over my 5ft3 stature. As such, it made reaching for the top shelf a bit of a challenge but then again, that is nothing new! Regardless most users engaging with ‘Smart Mall’ require a full body interaction as it spreads across 10 ft. Consequently, when we took to the challenge an audience formed behind us, each intently watching how we managed the shopping experience. As the platform was placed in the heart of Dubai’s main metro station spectators were hard to avoid which subsequently influenced the types of items that we placed in our basket, not wanting to select anything too personal.

Checking out

This lack of privacy became more apparent during the check out process when we were required to review our basket, total cost and provide a mobile number before progressing. Again, placing such personal details under the public eye may discourage other users from initially interacting with the platform. Thankfully the payment process was more personal with users being sign-posted to a pin-pad off screen.

That aside, the touch screen interaction was playful and engaging allowing us to infinitely spin the shelf until we saw a product worth purchasing.  While browsing, we found identifying products an issue due to the poor graphic resolution and lack of labels. This was not such an issue when selecting branded products as the company logo could easily be identified, yet unmarked products such as loose fruits and vegetables were hard to identify by the image alone. In our experience, we took some time debating if the product image was a packet of strawberries or tomatoes. Some may shrug and say ‘potato, potato’, but in this context such a slight misinterpretation would have been the difference of a tasty dessert or having tomatoes with whipped cream?!

In summary

The ‘Smart Mall’ places a fun and innovative spin around popping to ‘the local’ for your essentials. However as it is operating on such a grand size, we found the usability of the platform to be very public which may deter some users from initially engaging. In addition, the clarity around certain products needed to be enhanced with product labels provided. These usability issues currently prevent the platform from providing a seamless user experience yet I believe that with enhanced UX consideration and an increased engagement with users, ‘Smart Mall’ would likely become a newly recognised shopping interaction.