This was a combined effort by myself and my friend Samyul Halfpenny to design out shoplifting for the RSA competition 2009. Our research led us to delve into retail store design and how poorly many high-street stores are designed making the job for a shoplifter easier.
The Problem:
The Problem : In 2008/09 320,846 incidents of shoplifting occurred in the United Kingdom resulting in £5 billion worth of stolen goods. We want to address this problem by tackling blind spots and line of sight in retail stores.
Having poor store layout allows an opportunist shoplifter the chance to conceal unpaid goods in blind spots not observed by store staff or CCTV. This problem often occurs because of three main factors;
1. Too much stock on the shop floor.
2. Unusual store layout create blind spots.
3. High obstacles like tall shelving or pillars obstructing line of sight.
The Solution
The concept to solve this problem is to create a tiered store funnel layout, based on one side of the pyramid structure. The idea being that there would be two till points within the store, one being at the top at the highest point and the second at the bottom by the entrance. This gives the store a hierarchy structure and allows the staff to have total visibility and line of sight from top to bottom. The funnel structure adds to this system and reinforces the control the store workers have over the visibility of everyone’s actions. This concept is designed to remove blind spots and in turn deter the shoplifter from committing a crime within that specific retail store.
The Feedback
Feedback from showing our concept to store workers and a security guard.Research Book
RSA is a heavy research competition, in 6 weeks me and Samyul had to not only design out shoplifting but produce all our hard work that led us to our concept, we decided to bind this book ourselves with our own crudely designed clamp, the overall outcome looked amazing and made us feel like all these weeks of work was worthwhile.
