Peter Wang | The Basket: A Most Sophisticated Design

 
The intention behind this design is simple: to create an automated check-out system in the retail context. Trying to capture the best parts of Amazon’s (image-recognition & intuitive) and Uniqlo’s (RFID & accurate) checkout system, “The Basket” features a range RFID scanner and an intricate mechanical design that allows the basket to unload what’s contained inside. Supposedly, this would simplify the check-out process and ultimately improve customer’s shopping experience. However, due to its creator’s overemphasis on the special mechanics and display, it simply fails as a shopping basket although being fully functional, and is doomed to be just a whimsical design, making it more well known for its absurdity and irony despite all the serious intentions of its creator. In another word, “The Basket” started out as a highly practical project with entrepreneurial implication, but ended up as a rather “artistic” piece or more of a performance art with its creator winding up being a part of the display with his deadpan demonstration of its functionality.