Heatmapping store traffic patterns

So I’m working on a pretty fun project at work right now.  I’m taking data from a specialized camera that tracks people’s movements as they shop at a store.  With that data I create several analytic reports from them such as: Dwell Time – How long do people stand in front of a display; Path Count – How many people come in the store and go to the left vs. the right; Suspicious Transactions – Did a cashier return merchandise at a register without a customer present.

But there is one report that has me particularly excited.  I take all the customer movements for a given time period and I create a heatmap that overlays on top of the camera image.  This is very useful for marketers because it shows them the high traffic areas in the store as well as which end cap displays are generating the most attention.  Here is a sample:

Why America is Mediocre

I’ve been thinking about this lately:

• We demand to pay as little as possible for a tv, yet we are outraged when companies send manufacturing jobs overseas.
• We want cheap oil yet we claim we want to protect our environment.
• We call for affordable health care but we expect it to be provided at world-class quality.
• We want our kids to compete (scholarly) with leading countries, like Japan, but we are more worried about making sure the same average eductation is offered equally to all instead of focusing on those who want to succeed.
• We refuse to pay higher taxes yet we expect the government to keep providing free education, infrastructure, libraries, etc.

When you constantly cater to both extremes like this you end up comprimising somewhere near the middle.  You end up with a far inferior end result.  You’re not really good at anything and you kind of tend to just exist.  This is quickly becoming the way things are here in America.