Blind Box application concept design
Brick and mortar businesses have long been struggling under the pressure of online shopping. Particularly during the global COVID-19 epidemic, people wanted or were forced to limit physical contact. Although many quickly developed delivery services, order online and pick-up or use delivery service is not enough a reason to maintain a physical shop with high rent in a city centre.
Without the interaction with customers, there is no room for delivering the wau-effect of good quality product and personal service. Blind Box application concept is an attempt to turn the tide using gamification (Pokémon Go inspired user interface) and mystery (Gashapon). The aim is to attract customers not only to pick up a pre-ordered product but a good quality mystery product with matching service. Blind Box application is targeted at highly environmentally aware city people already using applications like ResQ, Matsmart or Fiksuruoka, interested in reducing waste while consuming responsibly.
What is a blind box?
The prototype of the blind box was a Gashapon invented in the United States in 1965. Twelve years later, in 1977, the Gashapon entered the Japanese toy market and was called the Gashapon. Modern Gashapon machines can be filled with any type of product from toys to pizzas. The word Gacha is meant to imitate the sound of turning the crank (”gacha”) and the capsule falling out (”pon”). The name ”gacha gacha” is a more generic (and common) variant.
Unlike the 25-cent or 50-cent machines that used to be common in American supermarkets filled with junk like cheap rubber balls or flimsy plastic rings, Japanese gacha gacha machines are filled with very high-quality products. They are usually made of high-grade PVC plastic and have a high level of detail.
What is the Blind Box application concept?
The blind Box offers a new feasible shopping platform. When a customer walks down the street with the Blind Box app installed on their smartphone, a 3D-enabled map appears on the user interface. Customers can see and check which retailer has a blind box or some promotion. Customers can buy blind boxes at a low price through the app and pick them up in-store for a limited time. Throughout the buying process, customers don’t know exactly what they’re buying. They only know which store the product came from. Once picked up from the store, they’ll know what they’ve purchased. They can buy products and food products from their favourite specific stores at cheap prices under the AR map outside the store, increasing the interaction between merchants and consumers. And if they like the product use promote functionality to recommend the products to other users.
The Blind Box offers a platform to reach customers offering mystery, the content of the box, and additional channel to sell products. The app has low investment, doesn’t require any particular hardware and can be used via browser or mobile phone. After the application is launched, it can bring a steady stream of benefits to investors in a form of commission from every order and the embedded advertising promotion as revenue.
The Blind Box application
In his thesis, Li Yinan designed and implemented the Blind Box application using JavaScript and React framework. The Pokemon Go inspired 3D map on the application’s user interface was developed with Unity. The Maps SDK for unity is a set of map development tools, services, and real assets that extend Unity to easily create mobile maps that read the world. The logical model of the information management and the physical model of the data were implemented based on the MySQL database.
The success of Blind Box depends on the quality of products and services offered in the box. Mystery needs to exceed expectations for a customer to try it the second time.
References:
”What is a gacha gacha?”. Gacha Gacha World. 2013-02-15 [online] Available at http://gachagachaworld.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-is-gacha-gacha.html [Accessed 24th May 2022]
Li, Yinan. 2022, Blind Box application concept design. https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022052612314