Transitioning to a paperless lifestyle is a common practice today, but if you’ve ever tried doing it yourself, you’ll know that getting rid of all that paper isn’t easy. Pretty much every financial institution offers paperless options and some retail stores have begun emailing you your receipt instead of printing it out on the spot, but we are still nowhere close to having a truly paperless society.
So what do you do with all of those stacks of paper when you try to go paperless? The only solution is to scan all of those pieces into your computer, and while there are solutions out there to make it a little easier, there is a lack of integration with your new digital lifestyle. German industrial designer Christoph Ptok and Entwurfreich GmbH took it upon themselves to explore the issue and came up with a concept that would make the process of going paperless more feasible.
INBOX is a complete going paperless solution that combines a scanner, storage box, and integrated app-based interface/organization tool. Just slide your receipt or paper document into the sleek scanner and then find it appear in its digital form on your iPad as a fully searchable file thanks to the built-in optical character recognition. And what happens to the paper document you fed into the scanner? It drops into a storage container that is placed under the scanner so that if you ever need the original version, it is neatly filed away for you.
While INBOX doesn’t solve the inevitable paper problem, it makes dealing with it a little easier. You could go out right now and buy a full featured scanner and some organization software, or spend a little more for a solution like that offered by Neat, but none of them offer the complete package like that offered by this German engineered digital lifestyle solution. Unfortunately, INBOX is still just a concept and is not a real product yet, but maybe if enough people show an interest in the product it will become a reality.
Sources: Entwurfreich
