May 3-7, 2005
Thesis Presentations
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| MenuVista | ||
|---|---|---|
| Author(s): | Chia-wei Chang | |
| Instructor: | Barton, Jake | |
| Class: | Final Project Seminar | |
| URL: | http://www.seeitny.com/ | |
| Keywords: | interact, interactive, flash, physical computing, projection, restaurant ordering, ordering | |
| MenuVesta provides restaurant customers a realistic preview of their orders by using photographic projection on real plates and also allows them to modify their orders by using a projected menu with a touch sensor interface which includes menu text and food images. | ||
| Can restaurant customers have more choices, make more changes, and receive more visual information when ordering? This project will be a fun, flexible, visual ordering system, which allows restaurant customers to use a gesture based system to modify the composition of their meals while providing a realistic preview of it. This project will include text and image based menus projected on a table, projections of meals on an empty plate and an option menu with image icons. My goal is to create an ordering system in restaurants which provides the customers rich, appealing, and realistic food images, freedom of choice, and a user friendly interface. Clear and realistic images can reduce the difference between the customers’ expectations and the real dishes. Freedom of customizing their orders can let the customers have more control over their dishes and may potentially improve their satisfactions. In the short term, I want to prove this system can improve customers’ dining experience; furthermore, this system should make the ordering an interesting experience. In the future, I am planning to open a restaurant with interactive installations in it. I hope this system can be the most important component of it. | ||
| Personal Statement: | I am a food lover. I love to eat and enjoy trying food with the name I’ve never heard. The odder the name, the more I want to try it. This habit indeed gave me a lot of good surprises; however, it also often surprised me in the opposite way. For this reason, I have always been thinking that the information on the menu is not enough. How can the plain text be able to represent the dishes? Sometimes, even if you know the specific name of a meal, you don’t always get the food you expected. For example, I came from Taiwan but I am not any better to order Chinese food. Even the menu came with mandarin names on it, and I was familiar with most of the dishes, I still usually ended up having food which I had no idea what it is. After a while I realized that the Chinese restaurants here in New York are usually run by people from China, and their way of cooking sometimes is way different to Taiwanese, thought the meal’s name is the same. Unfortunately, there was no way I could tell the difference from the menu with only text on it
Why should ordering food be so difficult? Don’t we go to the restaurant for eating the food we want? Why we can only accept what list on the menu and need to imagine what we are going to have? Furthermore, can’t the costumer be able to rewrite the menu? There must be a better way to fill the gap between the real food and the menu. In Japan, many of the restaurants have a menu with meal pictures on it or the food models display in the window. I like it a lot and it really helps me to make my decision. However, the pictures on the menu are usually small and can’t represent the real quantity. The models are better but I can’t see them after sitting in the restaurant. Furthermore, in most of the restaurant, there is no way to make any major change of the meal on the menu. The customers can only pick what’s in the menu. It’s pretty hard to get the idea of the quantity or the quality before the customer sees the dish. People take this situation for granted; however, is it really the only and the best way? The customers pay for their food, why can’t they have more control? Now we have many technologies available, such as wireless network, database, and different kinds of physical interface. However, they are hardly been seen in a restaurant. The ordering system today might still be the same as hundreds of years ago. I do believe there is a better way to remaking the ordering system in the restaurant. | |
| Context: | Problems:
The ordering system today in most restaurants customer chooses items from a plain text menu. The quantity and the quality are pretty hard to imagine when ordering. Usually the customers need to choose the dish based on their own experiences or waiter¡¦s explanation, neither of which are accurate. Furthermore, no major change of the dish can be made. Because customers can¡¦t get a clear idea of their order, it¡¦s pretty hard to know what kind of changes they want to make. In addition, existing systems don¡¦t allow restaurants to process personal requirements for each customer. It¡¦s also very inconvenient to update a paper based menu. The customers need to have more information and options of their dishes. Analysis of the Problem: The menu should be able to represent a clear image for each dish. Both the quantity and the quality should be presented clearly. The customers should be able to modify their order. A back end system is needed to support the restaurant¡¦s handling of customers¡¦ personal requirements and to dynamically update the menu. Existing Systems: Several attempts to improve the order system have been done: 1. A paper based menu with detail options. A restaurant named ¡§Craft¡¨ near the Union Sq., New York has a very flexible menu. Diners are invited to create their own dishes by ordering each element of the meal individually, choosing from lists of fish, meat, vegetables, mushrooms, potatoes, grains, beans, condiments and sauces, which are all priced separately. Customers can have roasted turbot with braised escarole, sautéed yellow foot mushrooms and truffle jus, or maybe leg of lamb with gnocchi and herb salad. Everything comes on separate plates so they can mix and match it their way. (*1) However, if the customer doesn¡¦t knowledge or experience of cooking, it¡¦s not so easy to imagine what the dishes are going to be. Because there are limited options for the quantity of the meal on the menu, the size of the order is still hard to predict. However, this kind of ordering system proves that the restaurant is able to handle a very detailed personalized order. There could be more possibilities than a fixed menu. 2. Kiosk ordering system for waiter. It¡¦s not hard to see a waiter using a computer kiosk to input the orderings nowadays. From the expansive French restaurant to fast food delivery, this kind of kiosk is all around. There are plenty of the systems available in the market, such as Execu/Touch™ Point of Sale software by Execu/Tech, FDS Crystal Point Software by TEC, Restaurant Enterprise by MICROS, and Table Service by Digital Dinning.(*2) Those systems are basically designed for waiters to use. It usually provides a graphical User Interface for inputting the order. Some of the systems allow some minor changes on the order, such as changing the sauce. However, more often the system¡¦s input interfaces have only icons on it and don¡¦t have any space for detail inputting. This kind of system can speed up the ordering process, but at the same time limit the possibilities of customizing the order. Those systems are designed for improving the restaurant¡¦s running but not for the customer¡¦s experience. It helps to simplify the process between the waiter and the kitchen; however, it doesn¡¦t improve customer¡¦s dinning experience at all. In the other hand, those systems show that the computer system can fit in to the restaurant smoothly. The restaurants are already very familiar with using the computer system. Insert a new system or updating the existing ones seems won¡¦t be too difficult to be done. 3. Kiosk ordering system for customer. Some fast food restaurants are introducing computer new kiosk systems for customers to use, such as McDonald¡¦s Customer-Driven Service,(*3) and Arby¡¦s similar system. These systems got different feedbacks from the customers. When Arby¡¦s system installed in the late 90s, some feedbacks are that the system was too hard to use so they prefer to order with the clerks. However, this kind of icon based kiosk system seems not so difficult for customers today. The IDEO¡¦s project built in 2003, and it gets a pretty good respond. (*4) It¡¦s reported the Customer-Driven Service shortens the waiting time. Ideally, this kind of system can speed up the whole ordering process and give the customer more controls. However, the system doesn¡¦t provide many options for the customer to customize the dishes. All the items on the menu are pre-fixed and can only be select by pressing the icons. There is still no space spared for personal requirements. Making a complicated order is still not easy. 4. Screen based menu at each table. Some students from Stanford University had designed a screen based menu system. (*5) This system is pretty similar to the online shopping systems used in most commercial web sites. It has a shopping cart function. The customer can browse through a graphical menu with several options, such as topping or sauce, and the nutritional information for each dish. The customers can add the items they like to the shopping cart and, like shopping sites, be able to check the cart at anytime and check out after decided. Moreover, it has a ¡§Call Waiter¡¨ button for shortening the waiting time for the waiter. This system has many attractive functions; however, the change for the dishes the customer can make is still very limited. Furthermore, the final result of the order can¡¦t be shown dynamically. No matter what kind of the change the customer made, the picture of each dish still looks the same. This project is only a research project done in the school, which has not yet been used in real world. Context Conclusion We customers are so used to the ordering system today. Browsing the text menu, pick up some things, and accept whatever it comes. For this reason, there aren¡¦t many attempts have been made to improve the system. Some kinds of computer kiosks has installed in many of the restaurant, however, those systems are not designed for improving the customers¡¦ dinning experience, but for the conveniences of people who run the restaurant. Some other approaches provide more options for the customers when ordering; however, they didn¡¦t give enough information for helping the customer to know how their orders were going to be. If the customers don¡¦t have enough knowledge of cooking, even they are provided with many options, they may still don¡¦t now how to order. With the technologies we have today, more information of the dishes should be able to provide and update dynamically when ordering | |
| Audience: | The ordering system I am designing is quite different to the existing ones, but more similar to computer-based applications. Furthermore, because this system will need multiple projectors, physical sensors, and a back end database to run it, the initial cost will be higher than normal systems. It may cause a higher than standard price of the dishes. The target users are people who are familiar with computers, interested in new technology, and able to afford a more expensive than usual dinner. Most important of all, they are also very interested in food. Therefore, the target audience would be young urban bourgeoisie with an attraction to new technology and food.
When the customers come to the restaurant, their experience of using this ordering system will be both an individual and a group experience. The users can explore the system by themselves or through discussing it with others. The system should be simple and provide enough instructions for the customers to learn how to operate it by themselves. However, if any difficulties occur, the waiters can help the customers to use the system. In other words, the waiters are no longer taking the orders but assisting the customers in using the ordering system. Therefore, the number of the waiters can be greatly reduced. | |
| User Scenario: | When the customer comes to the table, there are two empty plates, one is larger than the other, on an empty table. Nothing else can be seen except a blinking icon shows at the left side of the larger plate. On the icon it says:”START ORDERING.”
After the customer touch the start icon, the titles of each category of the menu show up. There will be no buttons on the table. The customer only needs to tough the icons projected on the table then the image of the dish he selected will be projected on his plate. At the mean time, the options of modifying the dishes and confirming the order will appear aside the plate. If the customer touch on the modify option, the food image on the plate will change according to customer’s selection. If the customer wants to browse other dishes, he can change the dish images by simply touching other dishes’ name. If he wants to see other category, he can also switch over by touching other category titles. After hitting the “Pick this” icon, the image of the dish will stay on the plate, so the customer can easily got the idea of what dishes he has already ordered. To complete the order, the customer can touch the “Complete Order” icon, which will show up after the customer picked the first dish. A summary of customer’s order will show up, so are the options of changing the orders. The options of changing the orders will only stay till the kitchen start making the food. | |
| Methodology: | MenuVista uses a virtical hanging projector above the table projecting the images of the menu and dishes images. QProx sensors installed beneath the table to catch the touching movement from the users. The PIC connected to the QProx will send out message through CoBox to a Flash movie to trigger the reactions. | |
| Sources: | Reference:
*1: AOL City Guide. http://newyork.digitalcity.com/newyork/dining/venue.adp?sbid=99624&squery=16%3acityids+AND+45%3avenuetypekey+AND+1001%3asubtypes+AND+2241%3atownkeys&uquery=type%3dvenue%26st%3dqf%26vtid%3d45%26stid%3d1001%26tid%3d2241%26search%3d%26x%3d35%26y%3d11&skip=9 *2: Execu/ Tech http://www.executouch.com/ TEC http://www.tecamerica.com/Pages/crystal4.html Micros http://www.micros.com/products/table_service_restaurants/ Digital Dinning http://www.digitaldining.com/POS/PrdTableBody.html *3 IDEO Customer-Driven Service project. 2003. http://www.ideo.com/portfolio/re.asp?x=50175 *4 CNN http://money.cnn.com/2003/08/11/news/companies/mcdonalds_diy/ *5 Automated Electronic Menu System by Linda Nguyen, Eric Furtado, Ken Jones, Curt Hoyt http://www.stanford.edu/~kenjones/cs147/ | |