A fun aside: Cooler Screens, the company making these, used to be the CEO of Walgreens, and Walgreens is their only "whale" customer.
Walgreens began to sour on the idea of the idea of these screens, and the current CEO basically cancelled the whole deal when he came in, calling them ugly, costly and ineffective.
Cooler Screens has been forced to take back many of the screens, which are custom made to the size of the Walgreens coolers, and cannot be resold of reused without getting new coolers to go with them.
Cooler Screens is suing Walgreens over this, but this is very much looking like a failed dystopian experiment.
What is it with Walgreens and adopting terrible tech ideas? This apparently started in 2017, shortly after Walgreens had terminated their Theranos partnership; you'd think that would have given them pause.
I wondered if someone else was going to bring this up. I guess retail is just super competitive and you're always desperate for the next differentiator... but still.
The retail experience consumers want and deserve
Cooler Screens was founded on the core idea that consumers deserve a better experience in brick-and-mortar retail. We bring in store consumers an irresistible experience with what they love about shopping online: ease, relevance, and transparency.
90%+ of consumers no longer prefer traditional glass cooler doors
Fortunately we don't have them where I live but they seem like a truly horrible idea.
I wonder if the survey question was something misleading like "Do you prefer to spend time looking through cooler doors or at an LCD TV with programming for you?"
> Cooler Screens has been forced to take back many of the screens, which are custom made to the size of the Walgreens coolers, and cannot be resold of reused without getting new coolers to go with them.
Cant wait to hang a cheap surplus cooler door on my living room wall hooked to a computer.
Sorry, I didn't notice. I read the beginning but it was a bit long winded for my taste (insert comment about modern attention spans here). I skimmed through it but obviously missed the multiple paragraphs about the Walgreens saga (insert comment about modern reading comprehension skills here).
First on some testbench, developing software, power supply, (physical) install procedures, etc. With that done, one would expect to outfit a few stores to see how they work IRL. But no:
"The initial round of installations in 2018 reached 10,300 screens in 700 stores."
As part of a $200 million plan to cover 2,500 stores.
From testbench to fitting 10k screens across 700 stores, without intermediate testrun in a few stores?!?
On the plus side: if this crashes & burns (pun intented) then it's mostly VC going up in smoke. Hopefully eating profit from Walgreens who dared to go into consumer-hostile territory. And showing other chains not to do this.
Also the difference between the firms' marketing research & actual reception by consumers is baffling. Probaby:
"Or perhaps the surveys backing this data were only ever collected in the first two days following installation at Walgreens locations adjacent to dispensaries holding free pre-roll promotions."
Of course regular shoppers are not Cooler Screens' customers. Or even chain owners(?). The brands they sell advertising space to, are.
There could be 1 consumer-friendly use: looking up label info, ingredients, nutritional value, vegetarian / vegan / halal etc, perhaps compare with alternative products. Without having to open door & grab product. Only a small screen per section would suffice. But nope...
The whole concept is just bad all around. Perhaps it's good thing this initial roll-out was poorly implemented.
I work in digital signage. We don't do these, but we do have other products aimed at retail.
Most of these displays are powered by run of the mill Windows machines. Often they are just standard off the shelf hardware, which when packed in an enclosed space with other electronics, and wrapped with cardboard, doesn't last too long. Even the screens are often just standard bigbox store TVs, although some manufactures do make displays specifically for digital signage (for 10x the price).
We have our own hardware running a custom Linux distro, and it's designed to operate in these sorts of environments. However not all accessories are. Right now we are trying to figure out what to do with a camera which is only designed to operate in environments under 50c where we keep having hardware failures.
The budget for installations like this most likely comes from the marketing department. So instead of paying for print ads with no idea how well they convert, the money is spent on digital signage which can at least track basic data like the number of impressions. Unfortunately in this case, it's probably treated like a win as they get more analytics data than they did before (impressions, door opens, open time).
I used to work digital signage in retail, though almost no refrigeration. And yes usually we backed our signs with normal small form factor pcs. Mac minis, nucs, raspberry-pis.
We were demoed these screens by one of those display providers (probably Planar) probably 8 years back... If these are the 'transparent' door displays my understanding is that they are essentially just normal displays without backlights/or that foil backing. They were pretty experimental at the time and they were seeing if we had any room to experiment with them (we didn't at the time)..
We did a bunch of experiments around 'ad tracking' displays in store by mounting cameras as well and writing basic opencv code that detected people looking at the display with mixed results.
I also worked in digital signage a few years back. We had a similar kind of refrigerator in our office, likely with an LG screen. The door/screen was transparent glass like the old fashioned ones and a layer of LCD. The upside of that kind of design is that the see-through door still works if the screen is off. And of course, you actually would see the real contents of the refrigerator once it's digital signage content deactivated (e.g. detected people by camera). On top of that, depending on the animation you would see through darker parts of the door to get a peek of the actual products inside (useful if you're unsure what you're looking at).
IIRC we displayed our office calendar on it, among other things.
On the other hand, the screens in the article seems to have made away completely with the glass, leading to completely opaque, black rectangles if they are not running. What a mess.
probably more readable though. With the displays at the time you could see through even the blacks it was like 50% transparent when displaying a totally black screen. Means you could see through it but the images you put on the display needed to be fairly simple and .. id dunno 'blocky' because depending on what was behind the glass it could get very visually confused.
> Right now we are trying to figure out what to do with a camera which is only designed to operate in environments under 50c where we keep having hardware failures.
What's really surprising is that there are no humans at Walgreens who can call out obviously bullshit customer surveys knowing that they're wrong. The company behaves like a zombie with no one really in control.
The emperor really has no clothes, but customer surveys say otherwise.
One VP introduces this idea, does "case studies" designed to make it look good, rolls it out, distorts the statistics to show that it's a win, collects a bonus, and then moves on.
A second VP recognizes that it's bogus, removes the program, distorts the statistics to show that it's a win, collects a bonus, and then moves on.
If a third VP were to pop up and point out that it's stupid, they would be vilified for standing in the way of progress and eventually ousted, or just leave out of disgust because of the company's stupid ideas.
This insight has caused me to essentially be blackpilled at my BigCorp job: Nothing means anything. No one is even trying to do a good job, and naively trying to do so one's self will probably just result in a PIP aka being fired.
Big tech is BS in exactly the way parent poster described but "doing a good job" doesn't usually get you PIP'd AFAICT. Just means you stay the same level for not rushing out half-baked features and very, very slowly people will realize you don't suck but it still won't help you get promo.
I'm not in Big Tech really, just a standard BigCo. IME doing anything productive in an enterprise environment means pulling out at least some legacy cruft constantly. Anything else means it accumulates faster than you can remove it. Unfortunately, almost every bit of cruft has someone that looks after it, so this naturally makes you enemies. The only realistic way to keep ones job is to constantly add to the pile, never remove from it.
VC money going up in flames has a tendency to kill their other invested-in companies through increased pressure to become the unicorn that digs them out of the hole. Hopefully this VC doesn’t invest heavily in anything actually good.
My wife stopped into a local supermarket (in the UK) a couple of weeks ago to grab some things, she came out slightly puzzled and said to me; something along the lines of "what a pain in the arse; all of the freezers have black glass now and I had to open each one to find out what was in them".
I was equally puzzled at why on earth they might have done this; It finally occurs to be, having read this, that they must have been screens, but they were off.
Was it possible that she was wearing polarized glasses?
I had this experience with the cooler screens at a Walgreens in Miami Beach. I wear polarized sunglasses. I didn't realize the windows were lit until I got very close and took my sunglasses off.
One day it will be like the movie, "They Live", only putting the glasses on prevents the ads that have invaded every waking moment of your life from showing.
I added a trivial css filter for my browser, that sets blur to images who's alt text contains the name of a particular public figure, and it's an absolute joy to not have to see some things anymore. I know it's there, but it's much more easily avoidable.
I keep falling for this in airports, for displays mounted on pillars or any other place where it doesn't make it obvious it's a screen. I keep thinking they put a bezel around black plastic, and then it dawns on me to tilt my head.
As for the polarized glasses thing; I recently found ad-blocking to be a feature of mine; I can't see the video/screen adverts on London bus stops when I'm wearing my polarized sun glasses; major win (shame it's not sunny very often).
Are they infecting us in the UK as well? I've yet to see a screen on any of our local shops yet but I've been worried this nonsense will make it to us as well.
I can't think of what else it could have been, but this would make sense based on what she described.
I haven't seen it myself, and I don't fancy a supermarket trip _just_ to check. It's also not one we frequent so it may be a while before I witness it for myself.
I'm so glad I wasn't the only one that came to the comments to try and figure out if this was dystopian fiction or not. As usual, reality continues to disappoint with the answer.
I've seen these in bars for a few years now - the beer bottle fridges behind the bar will run animated ads for the beer brands in the fridge (mostly Heineken)
Edit: correction on my above comment (past editing deadline).
The animated doors I've seen in bars are transparent LCDs, but the Walgreens screens in the businessinsider article above appear to be opaque & have a full (thick) monitor backing when opened. So they're... even less futuristic???
An example of the product I've seen in bars: http://damoccoolers.com/ - notably the contents of the cooler remain clearly visible most of the time.
Damoc is the principle and pretty much only competitor to Cooler Screens, in the cooler-with-a-screen space. I hesitate to endorse any implementation of this as a good idea, but if you accept the premise as Cooler Screens themselves articulate it, it's pretty obvious that Damoc has come up with a far better product.
I suspect that's part of the air of desperation in the Cooler Screens/Walgreens relationship. Cooler Screens doesn't actually have leadership on the technology so they need to hang on to their major customers to appear to be the mature, ready for business option.
The coolers I've seen have translucent doors (see comment above), so the game wouldn't be super clear. The Walgreens coolers could do it but I presume you're joking as it would have no concrete benefits over putting a normal screen in front of a bunch of coolers (or even projecting onto some white coolers).
The only real benefit would be getting a large screen out of stupid VC money.
These things are obviously a solution in search of a problem. MAYBE it would make sense on the front of a vending machine (because then you could hide the mechanics and perhaps get them more dense).
I made a positive statement to myself, as I left my teens, that I would never become that old man that hides from technology and gets left behind. But boy, I think I'm getting there. Between crap like this and the massively unethical "gig labor" economy and VR headsets, I want no part of what the world is becoming.
I think the core difference is that as a teen we see people reject tech and assume that it's the tech itself being rejected. That there is some underlying progress being shunned.
As an adult I realize that the tech is a layer of gloss and glamour on actively making the world worse than I knew it could be. I didn't have that perspective as a teen because as a teen I hadn't known the world.
Ex: "Sonny, I'm not against people communicating easily with their friends and sharing pictures, I'm against what I see as a wave of addictive gamified narcissistic codependency."
In an internet full of low-effort outrage hot takes, I have to say I love (and miss) this kind of writing style that's polemical but witty and restrained. One of my favorite quotes:
> "Age-old advertising technology would use the context that you are in front of the ice cream door as a trigger to display the ice cream through the door. In the era of the Cooler Screen, though, the ice cream itself is hidden safely out of view while the screen contacts a cloud service to obtain an advertisement that is contextually related to it."
Lots of great lines. Enjoyed the highlight of the cognitive dissonance in citing the benefits of "transparency.
>"The retail experience consumers want and deserve," Cooler Screens says on their website. I would admire this turn of phrase if it was intended as a contemptful one. Cooler Screens promise to bring the experience of shopping online, "ease, relevance, and transparency." "Transparency" seems like a poor choice of language when promoting a product that infamously compares poorly to the transparent door it replaces.
I was put off when I first scrolled the page and saw how long the article is, but it's really well-written with engaging storytelling.
Another great line:
> Cooler Screens promise to bring the experience of shopping online, "ease, relevance, and transparency." "Transparency" seems like a poor choice of language when promoting a product that infamously compares poorly to the transparent door it replaces.
> Cooler Screens' CRO, in the same interview, describes the devices as "a six-foot canvas with a 4K resolution where brands can share their message with a captive audience."
> I'm not sure that we're really captive in Walgreens, although the constant need to track down a Walgreens correction officer to unlock the cell in which they have placed the hand lotion does create that vibe.
It was at that point that I realized that the whole thing is just training us for a future in which we are displayed the item of our choice - a tea, piping hot Darjeeling or Lapsang Souchong - as just out of reach until we interact with the machine and are then blessed by it cautiously, tentatively and maybe even lovingly dispensing to us a tasteless brown liquid that is guaranteed to be almost but not quite entirely unlike tea.
(Can we claim Hitchhiker's Guide as Prior Art for all this nonsense?)
Yet we, the average person, are supposed to be concerned with the environment while corporate ogres play frivolous games like selling “Cooler Screens”. I say fuck it, burn it all down, we are doomed and being sold a lie.
100s of pounds of e-waste that will be headed for the landfills in a year or two when these inevitably break. But don't worry, Walgreens no longer uses plastic bags, because they care about the earth.
That's what I thought at first but since they use transparent doors (covered by the screens) for the inside-facing cameras, they are really nothing more than an added heat source close to the coolers.
A screen+camera would actually enable insanely good insulation, compared to glass. A 4cm/1.6" PUR sheet weights next to nothing and has a thermal transmittance (aka u-value) of 0.4 W/(m²K). That's about twice as good as modern, triple glazed windows.
It's not feasible to make glass doors on coolers much thicker, or else they'd be too heavy to move for a significant portion of the population without a motor or hydraulics.
Insulating glass better doesn't usually involve making the glass thicker; glass is a reasonably good heat conductor. It usually involves more, thinner sheets of glass stacked with air gaps between them. Argon is often used instead of air (nitrogen/oxygen) because it is a better insulator.
Adding extra layers of glass increases the thickness and weight of the entire glass assembly, which is colloquially what we refer to as glass thickness in North America.
As someone from and in North America, we don't usually refer to multi-layered thin glass as "thick" glass, we call it "double pane" or something similar.
Particularly since it's much lighter than an actual, single glass pane of equal thickness, which is the point here: the weight wouldn't be an issue, and even if it was, the screen is far, far heavier than better insulation.
A solid pane literally equal in thickness with a typical double pane assembly would practically only ever be used for much higher end products, like armored cars and so on. No one serious would ever consider it for normal commercial coolers.
And the vast majority as of 2023 already use double paned glass, so comparing this at all seems irrelevant.
You don't need to have expert knowledge to insist on your own opinions, but presenting amateur knowledge as if it was doesn't help the discussion. I would recommend studying industry publications if your genuinely curious about this field.
It seems you are confused, of course thick glass is used less frequently than double pane glass, but that doesn't mean we call the latter by the former in North America.
Recall that the topic was your suggestion that "It's not feasible to make glass doors on coolers much thicker", which given this new information, doesn't seem true. Indeed, these screens are a second layer of glass stuck on the existing glass cooler door, with electronics in between. That's heavier than the same thing with air in between.
The GP says that nobody would use actually thicker glass, they'd use two panes of thin glass instead. Their reply was a bit confusingly worded, I think you're both hostilely agreeing with each other.
Yeah, and it's like they deliberately set themselves up for failure too ?!
The way they engineered it is a bit like strapping a diesel generator on the top of an electric car as a promise to increase range... but a very inefficient one that weighs almost as much as the car itself.
P.S.: Coolers I can understand, but how come freezers use glass doors rather than a real insulator ? (+ printed out list of contents... now here might be an opportunity for minimal functionality, low power, e-paper displays ?)
Keep in mind that store fridges and freezers are opened a lot. If you can see through the door to what you’re trying to grab, you may be able to grab it faster, thus enabling you to close the door faster.
Crazy to think how much time and money went into something like this; what a hilarious and tragic waste. Imagine a world where those resources got used to like, build affordable housing or buy insulin for people something. Instead we're breaking a product that works great as-is on the off-chance we can push people to buy Monster instead of a Red Bull or whatever.
It grieves me that some twats made a pile of money from this.
I mean, there's a kind of honesty in making your money as a meth dealer. This product is like co-opting healthcare budget for shitting in a water fountain.
This sort of thing is just so horrible and inhumane for anyone with sensory issues. Going grocery shopping can already be a struggle to some people. I think this hasn't crossed the Atlantic yet, but I'm ready to stop going to any supermarket that implements this sort of aggression on customers eyes...
This trick stopped working at all of the gas stations I frequent, sometime within the last year or so.
All at approximately the same time, multiple brands. Or at least multiple signages, not sure I could attest to big oil corporate structure consolidations!
I assume it was a software update from the pump/ad network vendor, possibly in reaction to the secret getting out.
Are the speaker grilles easily accessible? I wonder if a quick jab of a pocket knife to wreck the speaker would fix it in a way that absolutely no one will be upset by.
A knife cut to the speaker diaphragm probably would just make the audio harsh and possibly (perceptually) louder. I've repaired speakers in similar conditions before. A complete girdling of the diaphragm is probably tricky to do through the speaker grille.
My suggestion would be to spray expanding polyurethane foam (e.g. Great Stuff) into the grille. Immobilize the diaphragm, and muffle anything that's left.
But, vandalism is bad. Even when it is justified retaliation. :-/
In the past I’ve used a flipper zero to lower the displayed price of gas on their signage and then file a complaint with the department of weights and measures. One gas station was closed for repeated violations.
What problem, annoying ads playing at a gas station? Gee I don't know, maybe not pump at gas station chains that use ads? Even as annoying as they might be, I can hold in my inner angst to deface property for the 4mins it takes to pump up my car.
Boycotts don't work and it's hopelessly idealistic to think they do.
What happens if you boycott your closest petrol station, spend extra cash, time and CO2 to reach the next closest one? You've penalised yourself, and the environment.
You may or may not convince other people to do the same, but the drop in revenue may not be noticed, or not get attributed correctly, or might be more than offset by the extra revenue from the adverts.
Meanwhile the replacement place that you're using notices that people seem to be tolerating the annoying adverts so they decide to do the same.
But if all gas stations do this, what is the solution? You're admonishing someone for proposing a solution that you consider unacceptable, but you're not providing any alternative solutions.
Every now and again, children have a way of cutting through the pretense and conceit of a problem let to fester far too long under some assumed adult guise of "civility".
Channel the inner 5 year old. It's the only way to be sure.
At some point property damage really is self defense if said property is actively engaging in what amounts to assault. And vote-with-your-dollar is silly advice when we cannot assume there are available alternatives, and when the "disruptors" and "marketing wizards" involved with this crap are explicitly reaching for captive-audiences, do not provide volume controls or off buttons, etc. Sometimes the gas station ads start up blaring noise after you've already paid, so you can't tell when you're going to get hit with them. And good luck finding a taxi or an airline without a screen blasting at you, effectively further monetizing people even though they are already paying for a service. Even first-class passengers everywhere are subjected at minimum to a litany of "join our miles club" crap every time they fly. If passengers aren't force-fed this stuff on the screen in front of them, it will be on the PA system, which really ought to be reserved for actual information/emergencies and not used as part of "captive audience" shenanigans to improve someone's margins. This behavior is sickening and should really be illegal. Since it's not illegal to engage in assault-through-advertising though, property damage starts to look like the only way for consumers to speak a language that corporations understand, i.e. by affecting bottom-lines and margins.
> Why would I need to provide a better solution to property damage?
Because you want others to believe that that is a bad solution. If its the only available effective solution then it isn't bad.
> It should be obvious, vote with your dollar, don't pump gas there.
How many gas station chains do you have to choose from near you and what makes you think that the others won't just put on the same annoying ads? Voting with your wallet is meaningless for issues where most people will begrudingly put up with something because there are only so many options and there are more important differences to them (mostly price).
I stopped going to my local station brand that blares ads non-stop over loudspeakers while pumping.
Nobody ever measures lost sales due to annoyed customers, it contradicts someone else's project, politics. Like that website that you immediately close when it bombards you with engagement popups.
> I stopped going to my local station brand that blares ads non-stop over loudspeakers while pumping.
I worry about the feedback loop here. You stopped going because of the ads, but unless the person making the decisions knows that, then these things don't change. I don't have a solution.
The person just wants to collect a "project successfully executed" score. Nobody else in the organization really cares either, because the organization is way too complex and works to sustain itself rather than the customer or even profits. It's exactly like those pages that bombard you with engagement popups as soon as they load: they only measure increase of engagement, but never the portion of users that close the page instantly.
I don't really care though. Gas quality is the same across brands.
We have a restaurant that only took cash for a long time. Because I usually pay everything with card, I have a card-only wallet and rarely any significant amount of cash on me. There is no ATM in the vicinity (it's in a small suburb).
The second time we didn't go there while passing that place, I dropped them a friendly mail. I must have been not the only one, because now they accept cards.
Sometimes talking to people helps. Though with a franchise there might be no-one on site with the power to "just fix" things. Regarding the gas station: Maybe charge at home instead? :P
If we start having these here, I'll possibly start ordering online prevent going to store itself.
It's more work everyone. Workers need to design the screens according to product inside, I need to wait to see whether my favorite cheese has moved for "engagement", etc.
Everyone hates it, and no wonder since frankly it is kind of violent and rape'y. No one has ever been forced to sit through captive-audience advertising and said to themselves "I love getting my ear and eye-holes hijacked against my will, hail corporate".
I don't compare these things lightly. What is disgusting is to ignore consent, to force things on others, and to violate some sacred interiority in the service of base desires.
The gas-pump ads are not as bad as airplane ads, since I could reclaim my right to choose by just walking away and never driving again, but in the later case there are literal restraints involved because I cannot leave the flight. What is disgusting is that "captive audience" is a selling point for marketing "innovations".
If it was well done I don't suppose I'd care? The moving and flashing would be annoying. E-ink seems a better fit if the glass was just too low annr factor.
The gas pumps are the worst. I had to stop for gas in a (relatively) shady neighborhood pretty late one night. I was the only person getting gas and it was relatively quiet around. Though people were walking around and such.
All attention was drawn directly towards me with this screen blaring advertisements at me. I as very much "put on display" in a way I did not enjoy.
As far as walgreens goes. I hate dealing with them. They charge premium prices for every item. But their parking lot is always dirty and unkempt; and their employees are less than helpful; and there is always a line. I'd rather just go to CVS and use the self checkout.
You can usually mute these. Better gas stations label the mute button, otherwise someone with a sharpie can do it too. Right side row of unused buttons, 2nd or third from the top.
It's like engagement metrics on apps. Yes, you get a short-term engagement boost, but ultimately you push the customer away, and they end up going places without this.
At the start of the article my assumption was that the reason to do this was to save power.
After all, the big glass front is not very thermally efficient. Regular fridges like you have at home have much more insulated doors.
But then we find out that not only is there still glass behind the screen, but also the screen itself is very hot and therefore consumes a lot of power.
advertising industry continues its march as a cancerous growth on society, news at 11. Why not waste a bunch of resources to bother people and make the experience objectively worse? It’s okay, we have some cherry picked market research we conducted that says 90+% of people like not seeing if the fridge is actually stocked before opening it. Definitely no shenanigans there!
If this catches on I’m sure they’ll eventually have them make sound too, noise pollution is no big deal right? Why not eventually make you watch a 5 second ad to open the freezer to force engagement? Itll be like YouTube except at the end you get eggs and Gatorade. How fun! Maybe you can get a coupon for 5 cents off if you watch 10 ads on the door. Then it’s like they’re doing you a favor!
I encountered these at a fairly typical Walgreens about 2 years ago. My initial reaction was "worst idea ever". I don't recall any of the screens not working, but it did make me feel like the entire shopping experience was worse, and the screens added no value". I will sometimes buy a drink at a drugstore when picking up a prescription or some sundry items, but these screens just discourage me from wasting time with that whole process, the UX is really bad. If they were playing ads I would actively avoid that entire aisle.
It's so they can coerce the brands inside the cooler to pay them to show them, just like (I suspect) much of Google Ads revenue is making sure that the top result for a search on "Coca Cola" isn't "Pepsi".
Some of these complaints remind me of the menu screens in places like McDonalds.
i.e. Holding up the queue because I'm unable to choose what I want from the menu, because the menu has temporarily changed into something else, and I have to wait for it to cycle around again.
Just loved this quote from the Cooler Screen people:
>When you think about it within the context of "I'm in front of an ice cream door and I want to buy," you have the ability to isolate the message to exactly what a consumer is focused on at this point in time based on the distance that they are from the door.
This also is achieved by a sign taped to the glass saying “ice cream, buy one get one free,” but where’s the VC money in that?
I was assuming this was some sort of smart shelves idea: you just walk up to the image, scan a QR code, and in the back a human/robot adds your shopping to a cart that you pick up on the way out, and you're automatically billed.
But it's just pictures of what's behind the door when you open it?
I just had a terrible experience with these at my local Walgreens. The Walgreens itself is in a very poor state, understaffed with unshelved stock sitting in shipping boxes up and down the aisles.
In the cooler aisle I was just looking for some ice cream, and I had to open 5-6 doors to find it. Not only were the displays wrong, upon opening the coolers they were mostly empty.
It was one of those times where I felt like I could be living in some sort of technological satire.
Half of me thinks this is a stupid idea but the other half of me is fascinated with "mixed reality" turned inside out and would love the opportunity to paint motion graphics on a canvas this big.
---
Bloomberg Businessweek has run a series of articles about the problems at Walgreens.
They just settled a shareholder lawsuit over the failed takeover of Rite Aid.
(I patronize Walgreens quite a lot because they are one of the closest stores to my location, mine used to be a Rite Aid.)
Before that they merged with the Boots chain in the U.K. and got the idea that they could increase sales in the front of the store (e.g. not pharmacy) but they didn't seem to understand the "cost disease" in the U.S. that makes health care an order of magnitude more expensive than anything else such that CVS, doubling down on health care, had the right strategy.
The pharmacy staff at our Walgreens deal heroically with a huge amount of brokenness, there was the time I needed a prescription filled in a hurry and they called around and found a competing pharmacy that had it in stock and sent over all my data including my insurance for one of those "seamless" experiences that marketers are always talking about. Then there was the time I came on Friday and they told me they could have it ready in 30 minutes but I said "No, I'll come tomorrow because I want to make it to a football game" and they said it would be ready the next day.
Well the next day they weren't able to fill any prescriptions because of some electrical failure that had technicians working in there. It turned out the pharmacist, because of a worker shortage, had driven two hours to get to work that morning! He also told me that they couldn't fill the prescription just yet anyway because my refill only became available the next day to which my reply was "I wanted to get the ball started early in case something went wrong."
> Half of me thinks this is a stupid idea but the other half of me is fascinated with "mixed reality" turned inside out and would love the opportunity to paint motion graphics on a canvas this big.
This would be a nice target for some guerilla hacking. Have some Pac-Man ghosts chasing each other from screen to screen, or something like that.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the article's theory that the main (technical) problem is thermals:
> "Cooler Screens does refer to them as vivid and engaging, and they must have thought that they needed to compete with store lighting to catch attention... the wattage of the backlighting (and attendant heat dissipated) must be considerable.
> "...I suspect they have a thermal problem. The whole system probably worked fine on a bench, but once manufactured and mounted with one face against an insulated cooler door, heat accumulates to the point that the SoC goes into thermal throttling and gives up on real-time playback of 4K video. The punishing temperature of the display and computer equipment leads to premature failure, and the screens go dark."
I wasn't involved with the hardware side of things. The SoCs are from Nvidia, iirc. The widely-publicized issues with Walgreens are 'electrical,' but I'm unsure of what that actually boils down to in practice.
Was there any awareness that the premise was kind of goofy from the jump? Was there any concern about the optics of the failing units described by the author?
Unlike the starting point, a regular glass door, which effectively always accurately displays its inventory, a screen layer, by nature, introduces the possibility of inaccurate data, an entirely dark door, etc. Hardware maintenance is no doubt important: having a bunch of inoperative doors, especially in a single location, can lead to customers having negative experiences. The advertising premise is more straightforward - show contextual ads to customers seconds before they make a purchase.
It seems like you just used a lot of words to explain the obvious thing everyone who encountered them experienced. It's on obvious step backwards from a glass door. The engineers had their work cut out for them to fix the ridiculous problem that the product created in the first place. Only for potential benefit of advertisers, and at the guaranteed detriment of consumers.
I was on the Retail Value Add (RVA) team, which primarily handles the backend providing the content to the doors, as well as an interface for clients to update said content.
I find these screens disorienting as hell. I'd leave the store empty handed only to be able to escape the screens in close proximity claustrophobia sensation that these make me feel.
The Walgreens a five minute walk from me put these in ~ a year ago. Even though everything was fully functioning at the start, I already knew it was a terrible idea and it would only get worse.
The one, single thing that could be a positive over glass doors is that if someone holds a door open too long, condensation builds up and obscures the view. But in every other respect these LCD panels make the experience worse, often dramatically worse.
As for the contextual ad part of it -- I never saw ads, just pictures and prices of what supposedly was inside. If there were ads I would have only resented them. But in fact the panels are often down, or show the wrong information due to them not tracking inventory well.
Wow. I had no idea this is why all the fridges at my Walgreens got turned opaque so you have to open them to see what's in them. I even asked the people working there - they told me "it's black to let in less light so it doesn't warm up".
I wonder if it will interface with the new Apple goggles. Screens looking at screens! Still will have to touch the box with the food in it. This will help make the insect meals look more appealing at least.
I hate these things. I shop at Walgreens because it is the only grocery store for several miles, and they have these on all the coolers. They have never once accurately shown what is actually in the coolers. All it does is tease the hell out of you by showing products on the shelves that aren't there when you open the door. And you have to open the door and let the hot air in just to see what is actually in there.
To be fair, this technology could have been introduced in a way that benefits the customer.
Some products are smaller than the others, making them harder to spot. Having a well organized and clearly visible directory that is also a guiding system might help.
Then again, stores like this are already doing their best to confuse, with those screens or without. No reason to believe screens have been introduced to help the customer.
On the other hand, displaying products in a uniform size with a front 2D view means you lose a lot of the context that you subconsciously use to spot a product, so while it might make otherwise hard-to-notice products easier to spot the first time, it makes it way harder to find it again because everything kinda just blends in together.
At least where I shop, on a shelf if a product itself is smaller, more rows of them are used to that the space on the shelf is roughly the same, even though each row might not be stocked to the full depth of the shelf.
In most cases at least. Upper/lower rows are generally where you can find smaller/niche products are more random on that front.
Like the article explains, the shelf placement has in most cases been negotiated and/or maximized for profit. The screens will not help: I expect them doing exactly the same: scale products to subtly promote/demote depending on agreements.
They will do this in addition to what is currently being already done, so it's likely a net loss for consumers.
However, most fridges are stocked with the same order, so I can just sub-cortically go to the fridge and look to the exact point to see whatever I want is there or not.
I do my shopping like that. First fridge set, third fridge, bottom shelf: Milk. Same set, last fridge, second shelf, right: My favorite cheese. That's time efficient.
We’re a few decades into a climate catastrophe; the world consumes far too many resources and energy. If nothing changes fundamentally, our grandchildren are going to live in a dystopian wasteland.
And yet somehow screens in front of fridges seem to be a good idea to some?
Putting screens in front of fridges could actually reduce energy consumption, if they allow the badly isolated glass doors to be replaced by thick, well-isolated doors.
This isn’t just about the isolation; adding screens where none are necessary to display a few more ads, wasting precious metals AND energy for a net negative to society is so despicable, I‘m at a loss of words.
Again, I feel like improving discoverability / readability could be it.
E.g. I like reading ingredients of various products. I’d be happy to look at them on a giant screen somehow, as opposed to reading small text while holding a freezing item.
Similar with showing price per weight, total numbers of inventory (so that I know that there are 5 ice creams available), etc.
But yes, this won’t happen, we’ll get ads instead.
Parasitism. Evolve into an ecological niche where your prey has no defence against you, and suck nutrients from the prey, up to a maximal level where you don't quote kill it outright.
We treat parasite infections with toxic chemicals. 50,000 litres of permethrin into the dwellings of the founders of this cooler door startup should be effective. Make sure you get all the larvae.
> Some products are smaller than the others, making them harder to spot
I fear that even this is not an actualisable benefit. Size is probably the easiest visual differentiator to perceive. You can differentiate between eyedrops and shampoo far faster than between different brands of shampoo.
I found out about this company when I was job hunting last year. I almost thought it was some sort of joke or pilot for something more innovative than replacing a transparent refrigerator door with a screen. I do not like putting down peoples ideas, but it’s pretty safe to say that this is product is the Juicero of the 2020s.
It has a complexity that is equal to its lack of utility.
Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as: "A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
IMO: If they are worried about energy efficiency: Triple pane glass with (I can't remember) gas between the panes is what we all have in our homes.
Seems like a case of someone letting their imagination run away with tech, without realizing that a simple solution, and less invasive test-marketing, is a much better approach.
Very strange. The principal purpose of cooler doors is to be insulating and transparent. So I know where my sweet tea or whatever is, can find and buy it without frustration. The money gets collected faster by the business, and I don't quit coming to the store from frustration and annoyance.
Do anything whatsoever to interfere with that, you have a demonstrably worse device. You will spend money to lose money, installing stupid doors to produce a drop in sales.
I cannot possibly imagine this is a good idea.
And I cannot possibly imagine anybody involved in the chain of events that led to this being created, had an iota of sense.
I first saw some sort of cooler screen in a grocery store in Bangkok, I think around 2019. The door was actually transparent, it was just the pixel layer, no reflectors or lights (light coming from the luminance of delicious products lit themselves by traditional in-cabinet lighting). As I recall the imagery was a loop of a pleasant airline attendant-looking lady offering a coke bottle.
Not sure I have been to a drug store of any kind in a few years though. Are these different? Truly screens so you can't see what's in the cabinets?
Indeed, these are full screens mounted between the glass door and the customer’s eyes. The Walgreens near me had them installed recently and they were generally functional - lit, animated, switched to inventory when I approached - but the inventory data was wrong. I wanted ice cream, one brand/flavor was available, but I opened the door to find it totally empty. Had to open it to know that the “available” ice cream was not actually available.
I'd prefer Walgreens invest their IT innovation energy into their Web sites, and their pickup&delivery operations.
Sometimes it's fine, and I've had worse healthcare IT experiences, but when something goes wrong for me involving that, it's alarming/infuriating to think how scrod people will be who are non-techies and/or who are limited due to illness.
I've seen great work by Walgreens pharmacists&pharmtechs, and hope for other aspects of Walgreens and CVS to consistently rise to that level of greatness. They are first go-to institutions for some aspects of critical healthcare, not 7-11s nor gas station convenience stores.
I had to google what the author is talking about. It is rich animated advertising surfaces mounted on top of food retail refrigerator doors. How atrocious, and no uBlock to turn it off.
I genuinely, without any doubt, believed this was alternate-world satire. For a second there, where the dates lined up and COVID was mentioned, I believed it, but quickly went back to thinking the writer is just very good at convincing the reader after the next few paragraphs.
The horrow I felt, when the HN comments provided links with pictures... The environmental impact alone should be enough to put several executives in prison! What the fuck were any of them thinking???
"How do we make the cooler door a more engaging experience?"
Imagine getting your raise request denied, meanwhile the guy asking these questions is an executive at your company. I could sadly see this concept coming to fruition in the future as a way for stores to make more passive money by playing ads on them (like gas station pumps do now in the US), but man do I not know a single other good reason to have them.
I had always figured that the point was to reduce food waste since you don't have to keep the shelves in the coolers visibly fully stocked.
But they do suck from a technical perspective and while I used to occasionally grab a case of beer or a cold soda from Walgreens I pretty much avoid it for that now, because the prices are still terrible and now the experience is too.
Oh, yeah, straws! We have those. They connect to your smartphone and have a meter so that you can be charged by the sip! Pretty cool tech. I know what you mean about having some that still work, since they're always breaking down. (j/k)
That's a good point, and tbh I was aware of color e-ink but I assumed the price difference was enough to be a non-starter for a (parasiteware) company.
i encountered these in.. i want to say Miami a while back or maybe in New Orleans. It's really awkward because the front screen just looks like an ad so my mind automatically doesn't believe it's showing what's behind the door. So I had to open each door all the way down the aisle to find what i was looking for because i didn't trust the screen. Also, they're very bright.
None of it makes sense but it would have been better to have like a projection of the actual inside with ads over laid on top. Make it more of an AR type setup vs just an ad.
A tempting target for a bit of hacktivism - break in and display some Banksys, pages from Marx, porn, whatever. Seems like there's some issues with the hardware engineering so no particular reason to expect the software side to be any better.
I have seen these in the wild. They're hilariously awful. Best thing about them is the computer.rip article which is entertaining and well written.
I hate these things, I have seen them in some of the Walgreens around town and I just keep on thinking about the energy wasted both by lighting up the whole screen brightly enough to see in the store, and by customers opening the doors up so they can see what's actually there and letting more cool air out.
I've never seen them displaying ads, just big graphics saying "WATER" or "ICE CREAM" or "MILK" or whatever when there's nobody in front of them. And I find it kind of fascinating how, when they do notice someone's in front of them and deign to switch to showing the inventory, my brain just completely slides off of the crisp pictures of the drinks on a bright white background. Even before the first time I opened one up to find that it was inaccurate, it felt like my brain just knew that the inventory would not necessarily match what would actually be in there, so why bother wasting energy parsing it?
(And this is with them all working, largely as designed.)
I am glad to know they are on the way out. "'Vegas' in a derogatory way" is a good summation of my reaction to them.
“If there are eyes somewhere, put a screen in front of it.” could be the mantra for the 21st century so far. I wonder and worry about the tablet toddlers in the shopping cart and at restaurants and what kind of world they will create when they have spent their whole lives looking at a reality several times removed from Plato’s shadows on the wall of the cave. These stupid cooler screens are just more fake reality for them to consume.
The show Legion had an excellent vignette about this very topic near the end of season 2. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHj2slKBF98 for reference). I thought it was pretty well done, although it doesn't really answer any questions, just raises the topic.
Every time I'm in a new store (and occasionally I'll repeat it) I'll tell managers that "as a customer, I'm complaining about those doors, and I'm not going to waste time opening all the doors to find what I want, I'll just go to another store." Now I realize they themselves don't care, but by saying "as a customer" I'm trying to help them truthfully say "customers are complaining and we're losing sales." Can't wait for them to be gone.
we're creating value by turning everything into gold! most won't ever be turned into pure gold, so let us create our value as we see fit. we're hurting no one; you say we are, that this lump of gold was a person, well that skeleton over there was a person, too, and that person died without the pure GIFT of being turned into gold and becoming pure value. That could have been that person's religion! Are you saying that you do not respect freedom of religion! Look at this guy, he doesn't want to turn people into gold-colored value!
You underestimate the mind’s potential. One can separately consider the tragedy and utility of his wish. (Guiding the reader to do so is kind of the purpose of the story, isn’t it?) As a bonus, doing so opens up delightful phrases like “shit Midas.”
And yet, people feel the need to take ads, that can be almost perfectly described as having the Midas touch, and feel the need to invent those lame phrases.
At first I thought this is like a clear oled panel on the door, but it’s just a huge, opaque when off, LCD screen? And they use cameras to show you what clear glass would have shown you otherwise?
Walgreens began to sour on the idea of the idea of these screens, and the current CEO basically cancelled the whole deal when he came in, calling them ugly, costly and ineffective.
Cooler Screens has been forced to take back many of the screens, which are custom made to the size of the Walgreens coolers, and cannot be resold of reused without getting new coolers to go with them.
Cooler Screens is suing Walgreens over this, but this is very much looking like a failed dystopian experiment.