This Store's Baskets Solve One of the Most Annoying Things About Shopping

There is nothing worse than trying to quietly browse in a store only to get harassed by bored shop assistants who insist on being able to help you. For the introverts of the world, this is enough of a reason to commit to internet shopping full time. But one store in Korea seems to have gotten the memo about how frustrating this experience can be for some and so has devised an ingenious way to get around it. The beauty store called Innisfree offers customers two types of baskets. One with a green tag for those customers confident of their list and who do not need any help, and one with an orange tag for shoppers wanting to speak to a shop assistant.

The brilliant invention was brought to the attention of the internet via Reddit, and of course, many people made it clear the system does have its flaws. What if they run out of one basket for instance. But overall you have to hand it to Innisfree for at least trying to tackle the problem.

Shopping trolley needs a design overhaul

The humble shopping cart is literally the symbol of shopping. It is being used as an icon to indicate where shops are on maps and highways signs, however, the actual design of the shopping cart is fairly poor. One wheel always gets stuck or refuses to get in synch with its three others.

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Some stores have heard the cry of despair and have responded with a mix of ingenious and just plain weird trolley design for the future. First up is a solution to a more serious problem than just a wayward trolley. Shopping in a large store with a trolley while in a wheelchair is close to impossible. Not only are most trolley handles way too high to be able to be accessed from a sitting position, it is almost physically impossible to be able to wheel yourself and push a trolley as both require two hands. One clever Xbox user recognized this problem and developed a product that hacks the Microsoft Kinect technology and uses it motion sensing ability to create an autonomous robot trolley that follows a shopper in a wheelchair around the store.

The device in its first iteration is a simple setup consisting of a laptop and a shopping basket integrated into a trolley with wheels. The clever invention follows around the shopper, stopping when they stop and can even avoid obstacles. If moving a trolley with two hands just seems too much, then you might want to find a store that has Designer Evan Gurgi's reinvention of the shopping basket.

Looking closer to a coat rack than a trolley, the ‘trolley’ has a single stem off which multiple baskets hang. The small baskets allow shoppers to easily divide their shopping into different categories and easily pull them along with only one hand.