David28227

I was walking around an unfamiliar store while visiting family in another state and had an idea that there might be an app that maps out a store and lets you search where something would be, I did a quick look and came up with nothing. I ended up walking down 4 or 5 isles before I found out where it was. If there is an app for this what is it? if there isn't, any developer who wants to take this on let me know so I can get it on the market when you're done :P

reagnon

the problem with this kind of app is that you need the store itself to provide data about the location and you would have to do this for a lot of stores. The only way for this to be possible is if a store itself decides to make it. (and it would have to be updated regulary...)

jmbillings

I think I read earlier this week that Tesco are coming out with something along these lines, along with in-store WiFi. But yeah, you'd need so much data that the stores themselves would have to do it.

paulscode

I disagree that the stores would have to do it. It could be a public database that is updated by the users themselves (similar to the way wikipedia works). An enormous amount of data simply requires an enormous amount of users to enter it. Of course, the app would have to become fairly popular for the database to become accurate, so overcoming that initial "critical mass" stage could be problematic..

CarletonTorpin

I agree with Paul. It could function easily by allowing users to simply turn the app on before shopping. The GPS will track where they go in the store and create a log of it. If this process is repeated 5 or 10 times by different users for the same store, eventually the GPS data will form a clear picture of areas that people aren't walking into, which would mean that there is a shelf or freestanding display there. Once that data is synthesized, the app should have a rough overview of the store layout from overhead.

After that, it's just up to users to document which aisle has which product. They can go to the first aisle, take a good (clear, non-blurry) picture of the overhead aisle description sign and the app can use Optical Character Recognition to determine what products are for sale in that aisle and what aisle number to label it as.

Of course, it's very easy to hypothesize things like this. It's quite another to actually program it. Personally, I love contributing to public databases (like adding Tips on FourSquare) so I know that I would definitely use this app if it were to be released. If you're interested in creating an official "App Request" for this, head on over to AppReque.st and submit it to the database.