layout: post

title: Beacon Beacon - Instore Navigation with iBeacons

author: Ian Black

categories: [hacks, innovation]

thumbnail: /img/blog/xxx.jpg

Here at pebble we love getting to share our way of working with new people, so on Thursday 26th May, we invited a team from [PA Consulting](http://www.paconsulting.com/) to spend a day hacking in our offices.

The theme was retail and consumer goods. After some breakfast and a brief introductions, we started discussing ideas and forming teams. Having seen a presentation by the [Wayfindr team](https://www.wayfindr.net/ ), I wanted to explore the potential of iBeacon technology, and quickly narrowed my area of interest to in-store navigation. Not long later, the concept of Bacon Beacon was born. We’ll get to that in a bit. First, let me tell you about a young man named Frank.

It was 10:45am. Frank woke up, groggy from last night’s great party. He heard a buzzing beside him and saw a message on screen from his mum. *“Good morning! Be with you in 15 minutes, can’t wait to see your new flat!”*. His body jolted into action as he swiftly realised he was completely unprepared for the brunch he was hosting for parents. The fridge was empty. His housemate mentioned a Tesco Superstore round the corner, but, having never been, he knew he would never find all the ingredients in time. So many aisles to search. So many miles of walking! If only there was some way to pinpoint exactly locations of the products he wanted to buy.

Alas, Frank lived in a world without Bacon Beacon. This meant he had to search the whole store for some bacon. While he was endlessly wandering, his parents turned up at his flat, saw he wasn’t in, and departed in fury. They disowned Frank shortly after. He fell into a deep downward spiral, lost his job, travelled to Thailand to find himself, met a spiritual guru, and was never heard of again.


Meanwhile, back in London, Rob Armes, Ian Black, Conrad Crates and Dave Hillier were working hard.

To navigate to a product in a store


We split the team into two strands. The development team got to work on reading locations from iBeacons, while the design team worked on the user experience.

After figuring out some hardware issues, the development team chose to build a native android app to allow access the bluetooth and compass capabilities of the phone. It was a struggle to accurately read information in a room of 25 different beacons. By the end of the day, they were able to get the device to point to different beacons, but ran out of time to build any navigational guidance based on the phones’ position.

Meanwhile the design team produced a set of wireframes, created an animation to visualise the experience of the app, and worked on a marketing site design to sell the product.


While we couldn’t use the app to navigate, it was a great experience for the team. We met new people, with different skillsets, and tried out some new tech too. Unfortunately, we lost the hack day, but we live in hope that with a bit more work, our idea could stop the world losing more people like Frank.