Connected High Street

将存储在商业街商店数据库中的各种商品的数据链接起来，为消费者提供了积极的结果，销售人员的福祉是英国快速扩张的服务业的一部分，商业街和英国经济的健康。尽管通过互联网上的购物体验建立了巨大的联系，但商业街仍然被锁定在19世纪的范式中，其中收银机是物质商品，客户和库存库存（数据库）之间的唯一接口（Carrier 1995）。购物者努力在互不相连的商店之间建立自己的联系，销售人员被迫扫描条形码或修理自助结账机，各方之间的数据仍然处于孤岛状态。“无摩擦购物体验”的愿景（Brynjofsson和Smith 2000）是物联网承诺的一部分（www.youtube.com/watch? v=_xNhL39uD7I），其中技术可以减少收银机的瓶颈，但这远未实现，相反，购物者已经转向“展厅”，使他们的生活更轻松（坎贝尔2013）。这个及时的项目探讨了重新配置客户，销售人员，收银机，有形的东西和数据库的传统组织的潜力，允许非物质和物质过程的商店“堆栈”共享数据，这将改善社会和经济状况。Portas Review（2011）记录了商业街的困境，该评论描述了互联网购物、城外购物中心和经济衰退对这些社会、经济和环境交流空间的影响（见米勒，1998）。其后果之一是当地年轻人的就业机会减少。今年的《格里姆西评论》（2013）对商业街的状况提出了更深层次的“数字”批评，拥抱数字经济的视角：“为了加强商业街，我们需要增加节点或网络参与者（零售、服务、地方政府、就业中心和所有其他人）之间的相互连接数量。相互联系越多，商业街网络就越能适应个人商店和服务的成功变化。“（Grimsey 2013：17）。我们的项目建立在NCR消费者体验（Cx）的研究和创新基础上，这些研究和创新是为了应对无处不在的计算的出现，在这种计算中，每个购物者都携带着智能手机形式的收银机。配备了一套应用程序，购物者能够进行购买，比较价格，跟踪商品，获得优惠券，并与朋友或陌生人一起获得更好的交易，所有这些都有助于消费者从商业街上获得最大收益的策略。该项目旨在利用这些复杂的用户知识，为与物理人工制品及其连接数据的交互提供新的模型，以改善商业街体验，恢复购物的核心价值和关系。研究伙伴关系是通过研究人员在处理连接商业街背景下剩余的重要组成部分：事物方面的专业知识和经验来完成的。在一条典型的商业街上，任何时候都有大量的产品可供选择，这是与每一件事物相关联的大型数据库和商店库存的物质表现。通过模式、相关性和建议，让购物者看到商业街上商品的规模，是发展一条更加连通的商业街的关键一步。通过更好地理解这些数据如何支持购物者和销售人员将“想要在一起的东西”联系起来，新的购物模式将出现，并重振物、人和建筑的作用。这个物联网项目坚定地定位于一个原则，即对事物、数据和人员的重新思考可能会解开并改善既定的实践。

Linking data about the wide range of goods that are stored in the databases of high street shops offers positive outcomes for consumers, the wellbeing of salesperson as part of the UK's rapidly expanding service sector, health of the high street and the UK economy. Despite the tremendous connections that are made through shopping experiences on the internet, the high street remains locked in a 19th Century paradigm in which the cash register is the only interface between material goods, the customer and the stock inventory (database) (Carrier 1995). Shoppers work hard to make their own connections between disconnected shops, salespeople are reduced to scanning barcodes or fixing self-checkout machines, and data between all parties remains in silos. The vision of a 'frictionless shopping experience' (Brynjofsson and Smith 2000) that part an Internet of Things promise (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xNhL39uD7I), in which technology can reduce the bottleneck of the cash register is far from being realised, instead shoppers have turned to 'showrooming' to make their lives easier (Campbell 2013).This timely project explores the potential for reconfiguring the traditional organisation of customer, salesperson, cash register, tangible things and database, allowing shops 'stacks' of both immaterial and material processes to share data that will improve social and economic conditions. That high streets are in trouble is documented by the Portas Review (2011), which describes the impact that internet shopping, out of town shopping centres and the economic downturn have had upon on these spaces of social, economic and environmental exchange (see Miller 1998). One ramification is decreased employment opportunities for local young people. This year the Grimsey Review (2013) offered a deeper 'digital' critique of the state of the High Street, embracing a Digitally Economic perspective "To strengthen the high street, we need to increase the number of mutual connections between the nodes or network participants (retail, services, local government, job centres and all others). The more mutual connections, the more adaptive the high street network becomes in response to changes in the success of individuals shops and services." (Grimsey 2013:17). Our project builds on research and innovation that NCR Consumer Experience (Cx) have initiated in response to the advent of ubiquitous computing in which every shopper carries a cash register in the form of a smart phone. Equipped with a suite of applications, shoppers are able to make purchases, compare prices, track goods, acquire vouchers and group together with friends or strangers to get better deals, all contributing to the consumers range of tactics to make the most from the high street. This project aims to use this sophisticated user knowledge to inform new models for interaction with physical artefacts and their connected data, to improve the high street experience and recover values and relationships that are core to shopping.The research partnership is completed through the investigators expertise and experience in handling the remaining vital component in the context of the connected high street: things. The extraordinary number of products available in a typical high street at any one time is a material manifestation of the big databases and shop inventories that are connected to each thing. Making visible the scale of the goods in the high street to the shopper, through patterns, correlations and recommendations is a critical step in developing a more connected high street. Through a better understanding of how this data can support the shopper and the salesperson to connect 'things that want to be together', new models of shopping will emerge and reinvigorate the role of things, people and architectures. This Internet of Things project is firmly located within a tenet that the re-thinking of things, data and people might unpack and ameliorate established practices.