[written in October 2013 but decided to publish now]

I think it would be awesome if checkout lights could be more useful.  For example, if the light would change color depending on how full the line was.  So, it could be red if it was really full, yellow if a little full, and green if empty or practically empty.  The wouldn’t even need to be any software installed to control the light.  The cashier could just flip a switch to change the light color.  Also, there could be lines on the floor to let the cashier know when to change it.  Of course I would prefer the software solution with learning etc.  The software solution would be to put up sensors like those that open the automatic doors at each of the lines on the floor.  But this way would be cheap and a good way to signal customers.

Also, (in my world 😉 ) in order to make checking people out fun there would be a friendly competition between the cashiers.  The computers could keep track of stats of each of the cashiers, like throughput, number of errors, most saved or most number of items etc.  Then you could