Reveal truth. Make better choices.

Semo Shopping makes this information useful in everyday decisions. The information is what the Semo Truth Engine reveals about economic activity: what it does for people, for the living world, and for the person who uses it. Semo Shopping is where that knowledge meets a shelf, a basket and a phone. It is free on iPhone and Android today. It is the simplest place to start playing.

The moment of choice

Many economic decisions are daily ones. A carton of oat drink. A bottle of dish soap. A bag of coffee. Each is a small decision, and each sends money somewhere. Semo starts from a plain observation: making decisions that truly reflect our values has never been more difficult.

The price is on the label. The rest is not. A price tells you what you pay, not what something costs people and the planet. Labels try to close that gap, but there are thousands of them, and they cannot be compared with one another. We all want fairness, yet marketing stories convince us otherwise.

Semo’s answer is one place to look. It is designed as a transparency tool that works without company influence: a product is valued whether its maker takes part or not. And it is designed so that the person choosing decides what counts. Semo calls this one single source of truth. Your truth.

Four steps

Semo Shopping turns this into four steps. The drawn screens below follow one ordinary product through all four.

The first step is to scan or search. Point the camera at a barcode, or search by name, and the app looks the product up. The sentence reaches further than products on purpose. Today the scan works on products with a barcode, and food is where the data is richest. Services, places and other economic activity are where the same step is designed to go, because the Truth Engine is designed so that any product, service or place can be valued by it.

The second step is to see the impacts. The result is one clear score, from −100 (degenerative) to +100 (regenerative). 0 means neutral impact, not bad. Behind the one number sit the aspects it is made of. Social: how the people in the chain are treated and how value is shared. Environmental: what the product takes from the living world and what it gives back. Performance: how well it does what it is for. Each aspect opens up, with a short explanation in plain language. The explanation describes the score; it never sets it. How much is known counts as well. Thin data is meant to lower the score rather than hide behind a claim, so that revealing hidden information becomes rewarding for the seller.

The third step is to personalise. People do not all weigh the same things. The app begins by asking what you value, from health and the environment to human rights and transparency. From there, Semo is designed so that you set how much each aspect counts for you.

The fourth step is to compare, choose, automate and keep track. On the fourth drawn screen, two drinks sit side by side, aspect by aspect: a choice between two packages becomes a choice between two clear pictures. Scan history and favourites keep what you have found, offline as a guest and synced once you sign in. Named shopping lists hold what you plan to buy. Wish lists are meant for the things you plan to buy later, so the comparison is done before the moment of purchase. Automating is the direction the lists grow in. Semo’s designs describe lists that come back scored, with suggestions matched to what you value, so that the better choice takes less effort each time.

Your view and the facts

Personalising could make a score meaningless. Semo’s design prevents that by keeping two things apart.

Your weights are designed to change only your own view. They never overwrite the facts. On the third drawn screen, the same oat drink shows a personal view of +46 next to a public score of +44. Both come from the same data. The public score is what everyone sees. Your view is that same data, weighted by what you said matters to you.

This keeps the score honest. No personal setting can move a measured value. Semo’s rule for companies points the same way: a company can never pay to change its score.

What people decide together is a different matter from what you set for yourself. In Semo’s design, people check the facts together, with a comment on every vote, and they decide together how much each aspect should count in the shared score. A vote never moves a measured value. That shared side is the democratic half of the Truth Engine, where Semo Vote comes in: we decide value together.

Every choice feeds the engine

Semo Shopping is not only a window onto the Truth Engine. It is one of the ways the engine is filled.

Anyone can add a missing product, submit a correction, or rate and review. Each of these improves the database for the next person who scans the same thing.

The economy is built collectively. Anyone can contribute and verify data.

This is how this game is played by all the users. No single player holds the whole picture. Every scan, correction and review is a move that makes the board clearer for everyone else.

It also changes the incentives on the other side of the shelf. More users means more incentive for organisations to become truly responsible and truly transparent. The loop runs: more users, more demand for truth, more transparency, better products. In Semo’s design, a seller that reveals more is valued on firmer ground, and a seller that hides is valued on what little is known.