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The topic of food safety hits the national airways every time there’s a major product recall or an unsafe practice is revealed. Recently, it’s “pink slime” that’s the hot food subject right now.
Every time these stories hit the national media, I’m reminded of something: consumers don’t know enough about where their food comes from and how it’s made. The release of a recent mobile food traceability app called CLEARthruchanges that dynamic.
CLEARthru gives consumers access to a wide range of information such as:
- Origin of product
- Product freshness
- Packaging information
- Nutrition and allergen facts
- Food recall information
All of this information can be accessed via a consumer’s smartphone by scanning a QR code. I think this technology has far-reaching potential.
Consumers Need the Ability to Trace Their Food
The incident of “pink slime” and major national recalls always highlights the fact that we’re left in the dark about too many things related to our food. We rarely know the exact location where our food is produced or whether there is a recall.
CLEARthru helps alleviate some of those poblems by giving consumers knowledge about exactly where their food was produced, and every processing and packing plant your food stops at on the way to the grocery store. This gives consumers an opportunity to look back into the food supply chain and access information that previously only manufacturers and distributors held in their distribution software.
It’s a great step toward giving consumers access to the information they need, but this technology is still at it’s early stages and needs a little time to develop.
There Are Still Limitations to Information
One of the major issues that I see with this app is that it requires consumers to have a smartphone in order to access this information. Beyond that, consumers have to scan the code in order to access it. While this isn’t a major imposition, most people that are shopping would rather get in and out of the grocery store. To incentivize consumers scanning these QR codes, however, CLEARthru offers specialty coupons that are attached to each QR code.
That should help with consumer adoption, but there’s one other major obstacle: companies have to agree to put these proprietary codes on their products. This is a sticking point. However, I do think that we as consumers could force these companies into adopting this kind of technology by demanding access to this important information. There are few things more important to know than where the food that sustains us comes from. And I think we need more of these kinds of technology solutions.
Do you have any thoughts on improving consumer traceability of our food? Please leave me a note over at my website at: Are Mobile Apps the Future of Food Traceability?
If you're like me, you rely on a host of Cloud applications to get your job done each day. While the convenience and familiarity of apps built for the web is great, I can't help but notice the difference between each user interface (UI) I use. Currently, all Cloud-based ERP vendors are approaching the user interface with their own design style. For users that work with multiple cloud apps each day, this can be disorienting - not to mention bad for productivity and usability.
As more products are built for the Cloud, I believe that we aught to start thinking about creating a set of standards for what Cloud-based applications should look and feel like. Getting there won't easy, so it's time to start talking about creating these standards today.
Why Should We Create Standards?
Inconsististency in UI design has negative impacts on usability and productivity. It results in having to invest in more user training and can lead to costly user errors. A unified and consistent UI, on the other hand, can boost productivity.
The reduction in training time wouldn't even have to be significant in order to result in sizable cost savings. Consider a large company with several hundred users. If the learning curve for a Cloud app were reduced from three days to two days, you could potentially be saving thousands of dollars on training--and have employees in the office for another day of work. Beyond that, a more familiar and consistent UI would help reduce the need for extensive technical support and documentation.
Cloud UI Standards Need to Evolve Gradually
Of course, working toward this end goal has to recognize the vast range of Cloud apps available on the market. For instance, an ERP system is several orders of magnitude more complex than an email marketing system. So the idea is less to create a standard for specific elements, and more to standardize the general elements.
I think Google apps are an instructive example of what I mean by this. While there is a big difference between Google Calendar and Google Docs, there is a lot of UI consistency between the two. Even though they perform very different functions, the look and feel is very familiar. Because of this, mastering one app makes it much easier to master another.
The Google example is illustrative for another reason: the UI change was gradual and iterative. Google has taken approach to UI development where it's rolled out small changes over time without trying to tackle every app at once. This allows them to learn what works best, and gives them the capability to incorporate new Web technologies as they come around. Furthermore, it allows Google to be able incorporate the latest UI capabilities into their new releases.
I envision a Cloud UI standard evolving in much the same way. There are lots of iterations to the development process, but you're never quite "finished." By taking this approach to a set of UI standards, you'd gradually reach a point where UIs are relatively consistent across the board.
We Need Industry Collaboration to Get There
The end goal and benefits are pretty clear here. But achieving the goal will require collaboration on the part of an industry that's currently more focused on building out their own product rather than creating product UI consistency.
My friend Brian Sommer, founder of Vital Analysis believes that something like a set of standards can only be achieved if "a vendor with a huge SaaS presence publishes a great library of standards." Who might those vendors be? Sommer suggested Salesforce, Oracle and SAP as the top movers and shakers.
I tend to agree with him. But I also think that given the rapid innovation we're seeing in the consumer tech world, we could use some help from companies like Google, Adobe and Apple. The industry recently got together to talk about creating standards for portablility. Why not get together to talk about standards for the user interface--and usability? We're a long way off from realizing something like this but I think we should start the conversation today.
What are your thoughts on how to make this happen? Please leave me a comment below.
I've got a soft spot for small businesses. I work for one and I love it. I like being at a place where everyone knows your name. On top of that, I like the idea of a small group of talented people being able to compete against much bigger enterprises. In the manufacturing industry, it can be difficult to stay afloat as a small business much less compete against the big dogs. It takes a combination of the right tools and the right talent.