Journal 10: Restaurant observation and Programing of physical controller

十月 02, 2017

1. In Class Exercise

1.1 The restaurant observation

I had my lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Yushan which located at Indooroopilly shopping centre. This week I had observed this restaurant. It uses the traditional decoration style of Chinese restaurant. It has a striking Chinese LOGO and it helps people to notice that this is a Chinese restaurant. There is a platform at the entrance. The waiter was standing behind the platform and welcome customers. When they stepped in, the waiter arranges a seat for them. There are many tables and each table pairs with four chairs. There are some remained spaces between the counter of tables and chairs. It allows people to move among tables.

There are two ways to order dishes. One is by menu. When customers have seated, the waiter will give them the menu. According to the menu, customer will order dishes and the waiter will record these dishes by paper and pen. Other one is by self-help. The waiters pushed a cart around tables. They display dim sum on the cart and ask customers whether need these dim sum. If yes, they will give dim sum to customers directly. The benefit of that is customers do not need to wait the cooking time. They can take the steamed food they excepted.

People usually choose to eat in the restaurant and rarely take it away. It might because Chinese people have the habit of dining together. When they are eating, people also chatting or discussing something.

Based on my observation, I realised that its waiters are friendly. They will push the cart, and patiently asked the customers whether need any service.

There are some external/internal factors impact on their experience. As for external factor, cultural background plays an important role. Many Chinese customers are accustomed to such a service method. In this case, a large number of staff need to be employed to service different customers.

This restaurant contains many Chinese design elements and have Chinese decoration style. For example, the LOGO is Chinese words and the menu is also written in Chinese. It seems targeted users of this restaurant is Chinese people and people who like Chinese food. Although it can attract these customs easily, but this is also a pain point because it restricted customer groups. It might difficult to attract people who do not come from China.

1.2 Enhance experience by technology

My suggestion is that the existing experience of ordering in Yushan can be supported by an APP. Firstly, customers can order on an APP by themselves without waiters' guide. Therefore, waiters do not need record the dishes every time by hands. It is more convenient for both customers and waiters. Secondly, if waiters often shuttle around the customer, it will make people feel annoying. For example, when two people are discuss something important, the waiter interrupt them and ask them which dishes they wanted. I think this situation is not good. To avoid that, I try to design a calling on the APP. Thus, customers can call the wait stuff when they need. If they do not need the service, they will not be interrupted.

Using APP might change this experience. Firstly, it gives a more free dining environment because waiters will not interrupt customers when are having lunch. Secondly, the way of service becomes more independent. The reason is that customers are no longer dependent on the waiter for ordering. It also decrease the workload of the waiters.

There are two scenarios I want to test. Firstly, two customers are using the iPad APP to order dishes. They are talking about which food they want to eat. All information is displayed on the digital menu. After ordering, the dishes will submit to the the kitchen automatically. Later, the waiter offer the finished dish to customers. To observe this process, I will record how many time they used to order and compare the result with the tradition ordering time taking. I will fine out which one is more efficient. The purpose of this testing is to check whether the customer has a better dining experience. Next, this two customers want to add some drinking water. They click the calling button on the APP. In a short time, waiter come to they and ask them what can he help. They say that they want some water. Then, the waiter provides some water for them. This time, I want to record the time from customers click button to waiter come to service them. If the waiter use less response time, it means customers wait less time. It likely to require better user experience.

2. Prototype process

This week I finished my programing of my physical controller.

In this physical I/O prototype, I changed the design of my analog due to the previous feedbacks. (All changes I did will be highlighted.) My old analog is like a glove which need to be wear on player’s arm. However, it is inconvenient for players only use one hand to handle it. Thus, I changed my controllor to a board. Now, players can use two hands to control it and it is esyier. In order to control the direction of character, I designed a combination of our buttons as a slide bar. Technically, there are 4 buttons (A, S, D, F) which connect with MakeyMakey. If the player slide the bar in order as A->S->D->F, the character will go to right. If the player slide in order as F->D->S->A, the character will go to left. There is a jump bar. Player can press it to make the character jump.