This story was published as an April Fool April 1 2014 Vertica does not work with the dog Leisa (though it is cute), and we have not based business on the analysis of collected beer caps and GPS tracks:-)
Vertica has (somewhat secretly) two projects where we have taken completely new methods are needed for data collection and analysis. Walmart has in the United States used sniffer dogs equipped with cameras in all secretly filming customers in their quest around the shops - it has a large amount of "mystery shopping" material, which has meant that the giant chain store has been invaluable input to business decor, and later the inspiration for the design of their online store. In Denmark, this kind of spy shots (whether carried out by people or animals) in breach of privacy legislation and not least ethically questionable. The method is so fruitful that we have not been able to deter us from the organization to Danish conditions lequip e and standards.
Walmarts method is a variant of cultural probing, which is intended to give different inspiration that can potentially revolutionize a product or business. It is also cultural probing with a good dose of Jutland common sense and resourcefulness that has brought us to our setup, which has already produced significant results.
Two months to innovative input in an intensive testing period of two months, we now have cooperation with two different customers, respectively. Aarhus Municipality and a major Danish retail trade. Here we have with Walmart's approach lequip e as a model used a dog for data collection. The objectives have been slightly different for the two customers: Aarhus wants to be innovative about the development of the urban environment, the optimization of workflows in the various magistrates, while they save money. Daily Commodity Trading want to get greater customer lequip e insight and input to a more profitable product line.
In the first alpha prototype stage was the dog exclusively equipped with a magnetic collar that attracts and retains the metal fragments, as the dog passes the cityscape. Leisa is trained to roam around the city of Aarhus on their own and came every day during the test period home with new probes, which provided input to the project. The collected items included: beer caps, foreign coins (the Danish are not attracted by magnets), lost keys, and even jewelry.
Results from the alpha test with magnetic collars Initially, the collected data in the form of the metal objects despair - we're used to from user tests and split tests to get very unique and highly liquid results. But what do you do with metal fragments? Through a series of structured workshops began to turn out one pattern after another in the data, which quickly gained the project's initial lequip e investment in: A team member from our grocery retail customer began to pare that there were inscriptions on many of the capsules . One would expect that there were "Tuborg" or "Carlsberg" on them. A more detailed analysis showed that the anonymous capsules (obtained in the Latin Quarter) almost all come from the many microbreweries that have sprung up around the country. These data were converted to the selected microbrews were involved in the customer's product range - with 3-digit percentage growth and significantly increased earnings in this product group. At Aarhus clipped to the fact that in general were so many metal objects to gather in the city of Aarhus. The data ended up missing the municipality lequip e through a campaign to increase public focus on waste, as municipal employees do not have to spend time collecting garbage up. There is now also a lost property app in development, since it has been estimated that the more valuable items not delivered to the lost property simply because it is inconvenient.
Results lequip e from the beta test with GPS transmitter We continued now with more advanced equipment. Both our customers were, after initial attempts interested in more accurate data - which moves the dog at what times, and what it means for the collected metal objects?
We Leisa equipped with a GPS transmitter (a Garmin Astro DC50) and sent it back out in the center of Aarhus - and we remained open to the data we had to get back. An example of data collection is this card. The blue line shows where Leisa has moved:
Again it was initially a little desperate to get data return - for what could we infer? Immediately does not really matter. And yet - data provided by detailed analysis actually again rise to two significant input to our customer's business: There is a clear circle lequip e around the intersection where the restaurants / cafes are located side by side. A follow-up visit showed that the guests at these sites in great style Leisa fed and caressed it. This data input meant that our grocery market now sell small "goodie bags" with dog biscuits as h