Redesigning the Restaurant Experience

Experience Prototyping

This week we looked at experience prototyping. Which is essentially taking your prototype into its context of use and allow users to test it. It makes a great deal of sense and it is a nice way of bringing the design process loop back around. Start by placing yourself as a designer in the users context to empathize with them. Ideate and prototype (locking yourself in a tower optional) and then place your design artifact back into the context of your users. Failing this try as much as possible to simulate the context so that testers can have the same experience with your prototype as they would in the real world.

I peeked briefly at the IDEO paper about experience prototyping. Their definition of experience puts into perspective the sheer difficulty of designing a successful product, its not just about how the artifact works and how users interact with it, but a whole raft of dynamic elements which make up the experience.

Armed with this knowledge its time to jump into this weeks lecture exercise which was to look at the experience of a restaurant and come up with ways in which it could be improved with technology.

Exercise

Q1: What is the existing experience from different stakeholder POVs?

I am going to try and keep it brief because I feel like just this question could take a whole blog post. When you consider all the different types of restaurants, some have street dining which would make the general public a stakeholder (especially if there is smoking) and the restaurant managers and owners are another major stakeholder. For the sake of this post I will look at the three major players we defined in the lecture:

1. Customers (Diners)
2. Wait Staff
3. Chefs (Cook Staff)

In terms of the customer the service or experience they get from a restaurant is a transaction in which they are provided food and drinks for a price. Wait staff and waiters are the middle man between the customer and the chefs, they take the order information from the customer and provide it to the chefs. Chefs deal with the preparation of meals and the cleaning of the kitchens.  

Q2: What external/internal factors impact on the experience?

Customer External

• Seating (Chairs, Stools, Standing, Booth Indoor, Outdoor)
• Environment (Temperature, weather, noise, other customers, time of day)
• Wait Staff (Attitude, attentiveness, service)

Customer Internal

• Appetite (Everything tastes better when your hungry)
• State of Rush or Relaxation
• Familiarity with restaurant (The place I always go because I know it is always good affects my perception)
• Level of Intoxication

Wait Staff External

• Management
• Other Waiters
• Customers
• Chefs
• Time of day

Wait Staff Internal

• Attitude 
• Enthusiasm for their job
• Stress level
• Level of competency (trainee or experienced)

Chef External

• Flow of customers
• Other Chefs
• Suppliers (for ingredients) 
• Kitchen layout
• Kitchen tools

Chef Internal

• Skills (Cooking abilities / specialties)
• Motivation
• Workload (stress level)

Q3: What aspects of the existing experience could be enhanced / augmented / supported with technology?

Almost every aspect of the experience could be redesigned. While it may be easier to focus on the external elements to augment to improve the experience it is more important to recognize the relationship between external factors and users internal states. While we may assume that customers hate to stand up and always want to be seated, this may destroy customers perception of the environment and have a negative impact on their experience. It is this subtle difference that may differentiate one bar from another or one bar from a lounge. 

Customer Experience

Transitions glass placed in the restaurant to minimize glare when sitting near windows and prevent sunburn when sitting for prolonged periods.

Wait Staff Experience

Coloured lights on customer tables which change colour depending on the waiter you are being served by, so that staff can keep track of the patrons they are serving. 

Chef Experience

Set up a social media account for each table in the restaurant then provide a live stream of the posts from customers for the chefs to see, so they can get immediate feedback.

Q4: How would introducing technology in to this context change the experience?

Customer Experience
If this change was implemented it could have huge impacts of the overall aesthetics of the restaurant itself. There might need to be extra lights added to ensure that the space was still adequately lit.

Wait Staff Experience
If this change was implemented it may make wait staff less attentive to other tables not of their own colour. While giving waiters direct ownership of a subset of customers may improve their service to those customers it could decrease their attentiveness to other customers and lead to an overall drop in service level.

Chef Experience
If this change was implemented it would change the dining experience for the customers as they might feed obligate to leave a review, or be influenced by the decisions of people who ate at the table prior to them.

What experience scenarios might you test with the technology?

Customer Experience

You might provide customers with sunglasses to wear while they are dining at a restaurant and have them interact as they normally would. You could observe the effects as well as interview them afterwards to find out how it affected their experience.

Wait Staff Experience

You could test this type of system with a low fidelity post it style process where waiters would leave their coloured post it on tables which they were serving. This could be a good way to test what position to place the lights and if wait staff behaviors differed between tables they 'owned' and did not own.

Chef Experience

This scenario experience could be simulated by having a small phone / tablet / screen set up in the kitchen with a chefs social media account up. Then people running the testing session could ask users to photograph or comment on their food and send it to the account.