Saturday 1 November 2008

Closeup of the Tesco Shopping Application shown at Microsoft PDC

Just arrived back in London after a great week at the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference (PDC2008) in Los Angeles where the announcement of the forthcoming Tesco API and the Tesco Shopping Application went down a storm!

I'm not just 'saying that' - the unexpected huge 'wall' of joyous applause that crashed into me when I was on stage when the webcam barcode scanning was demonstrated is not one I'll forget (see video blog entry).

Here are some screenshots of the prototype Tesco grocery home shopping application to give you a sense of what we are trying to achieve with this prototype. It's all about quick and convenient shopping for groceries., as well as easily finding cheaper alternatives and remembering interesting items you wish to buy in the future.

The prototype application was researched and developed for us by Conchango, a company specialising in designing excellent experiences in software. As you can see, they raised their game pretty high to help create this groundbreaking application.


Above is the 'corkboard'-style main screen. It accesses feeds from Flickr, Live and other RSS-compatible photo feeds that you can set up.

The calendar is 'powered' by Window Live/Hotmail so if you have a Live-ID you can let the application load up your calendar to display various entries you have added. Usefully, the application stores your booked Tesco delivery slot. You can also plan meals by dragging products (and whole meal ideas and recipes) into the calendar in order to plan and budget. This is saved into your Live calendar which can be accessed from the web and other applications, too.




Above is the result of a product search. You can move products into your shopping basket or favourite lists by dragging them from their location across into one of the circled areas.


Here is an example of a recipe. You can alter ingredient levels by altering the 'serve' number. You can then drag the whole thing into a shopping basket.

The whole application is at the prototype stage and we're going to be testing it over the coming weeks and months alongside the Tesco API which is at the prototype stage and going through its first peer review.

My goal is to make the whole thing fully live by Summer 2009, and 'quietly live' (or what the rest of the internet likes to refer to as 'beta'!) much sooner.

1 comment:

  1. Great Stuff !

    How can I sign up for the beta ? Id realy like to test this app ...

    ReplyDelete

As this blog grows in readership - and because it carries the Tesco brand - I have had to become more careful about the sort of comments that are acceptable. The good news is that I'm a champion of free speech so please be as praising or as critical as you wish! The only comments I DON'T allow through are:

1. Comments which criticise an individual other than myself, or are critical of an organisation other than Tesco. This is simply because they cannot defend themselves so is unfair and possibly libellous. Comments about some aspect of Tesco being better/worse than another equivalent organisation are allowed as long as you start by saying "in my personal opinion.." or "I think that...". ... followed by a "...because.." and some reasoned argument.

2. Comments which are totally unrelated to the context of the original article. If I have written about a mobile app and you start complaining about the price of potatoes then your comment isn't going stay for long!

3. Advertising / web links / spam.

4. Insulting / obscene messages.


Ok, rules done - now it's your go: