Shop when it's empty!

In April 2020, I won the Newlab COVID-19 hackathon with an idea very originally named "Optimize".

It was the peak of COVID, and our task in the hackathon was to use data to come up with ideas that could help COVID relief efforts. now.

I kept on noticing that lines in front of shops were emptiest on Sundays, low and behold, Foursquare data confirmed the same:

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The idea was then clear, what if we could maximize the impact of social distancing efforts by smoothing the number of people that go shopping throughout the week?

Using another brilliant tool for data visualization, Bokeh, you can see for yourself how footfall to supermarkets varies throughout the week:

I created a heatmap to illustrate the changes of footfall throughout the week. Combined with census data, I then identified the number of people that would beed to be shifted between different days to smooth the footfall.

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But that's not where the story ends!

We all know changing behavior is insanely hard, thats why, we are not going to tell people to not shop on Sundays, instead, we will incentivize them! How? With a 10% discount to go shopping on Sundays - why would you not shop on a different day if you can get the items for less? (Pending they have what you want...)

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I was the only participant to translate data into a product, and I believe that was part of why I won the event! 

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Further Reading:

• If you want to see the other fantastic presentations, and my dope presentation of this 1, click here