To improve the dining experience by emphasizing customer comfort and satisfaction while paying close attention to detail. We want to create a dining experience that allows customers to take a break from their hectic schedules and enjoy an elevated experience that incorporates digital tools seamlessly without interfering with the social aspect of dining.
As a Product designer and researcher I worked on doing extensive research and prototyping and designing of the of screens.
Xinran
Riddhi
Nikith
Dilnoza
Figma, Figjam, Adobe XD
One of our priorities was finding such dining places in town. Our choice was casual dining, as it was a smaller size restaurant where people could sit longer and eat. We identified significant pain points in the diners' experiences after conducting observations and debriefing as a team. These included a lack of clarity in understanding the dishes on the menu and long wait times for food. we decided to conduct additional observations during the spring break with a clear focus on observing friends or peers and how they would react to a cuisine menu, they are unfamiliar with while ordering food.
Key Takeaways: The observation studies helped us focus on the ordering experience, especially the interaction with the menu and interaction among diners until the food arrived.
To ensure a thorough understanding of the various aspects of restaurant dining, we conducted extensive research by reading relevant literature, perusing online blogs, youtube videos, and exploring dining forums. To guide our efforts, we divided our research into five primary areas: cultural and ethnic restaurants, dining menus, dining environments, interactions with technology, and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) in restaurants.
Dining menus
Our exploration of cultural and ethnic restaurants, dining menu designs, and immersive technologies like AR and VR revealed that these elements significantly enhance the dining experience. By patronizing ethnic restaurants, diners can learn about different cultures (Sukalakamala & Boyce, 2007; Tian, 2010). Effective menu designs that use unfamiliar ingredients and share dish stories boost perceived authenticity (Youn & Kim, 2017; Wang & Mattila, 2015). Immersive technologies, such as AR and VR, create engaging and interactive experiences, blending the physical and simulated worlds to provide an unforgettable culinary journey that celebrates diverse cultural traditions (Delarue & Lageat, 2019; Hehn et al., 2019; Batat, 2021).
Interaction with technology
Cultural restaurants
Ethnic restaurants
Dining Environments
Challenges faced customer's
Design Frame
How might we's:
How might we create a fun experience for families with young children eating at an international restaurant?
How might we improve the selection of dishes on the menu?
How might we help diners avoid experiencing wrong orders?
How might we help customers enhance restaurant dining experiences by innovating traditional menus?
Intial Experience Journey Map
Persona
How might we create an immersive experience for people dining in an ethnic restaurant for the first time?
Ideation
Refined Experience Journey Map
Artifact Ecology
High-Fideility Solutions
The AR’s effects on a restaurant experience’s sensory dimension- sight, sound, smell, taste, touch” (Batat, 2021). We were inspired by this, and our solution is to create an immersive experience for first-time visitors of our ethnic restaurant, engaging all their five senses - sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch. We have designed a special booth for our customers, where they will have an interactive menu in front of them (touch) and five small bottles of spices to smell and experience (smell). The walls surrounding them will display videos using a projector (sight), while a sound system plays audio guides and music (sound) to accompany their meal (taste).
The waiter will receive the message on their watch, saving time for the staff and streamlining the process.
Customers can also reach out to waiters using the interactive menu.
When customers confirm their orders using the interactive menu, their requests and customizations will appear on an interactive screen in the kitchen. Once the chefs have completed the dishes, they can use the screen to call for a waiter. The waiter will receive the message on their watch, saving time for the staff and streamlining the process. Customers can also reach out to waiters using the interactive menu. It helps to ensure that customers receive their meals quickly and accurately and improve efficiency for the restaurant staff.
Interactive Mat
Customers can explore different dishes and enjoyably learn about our culture.
Customers can experience and sense the ingredients used in the dishes.
Customers can also reach out to waiters using the interactive menu or they can add more items to the order as per their need.
Takeaways
What went right
A clear establishment of design frame and a focus on the experience between ordering a dish to wait for a dish.
An enriching experience of the culture, cuisine, and dish.
The sense of smell to knowing the spices being used in the dish was an interesting and creative concept.
What did not work
Consider how much technology would hamper user interactions and try to incorporate more human interaction
The connection between the interactive mat and the immersive screens running in the background.
Prototypes had small interaction gaps and did not give users feedback on what to do next.
Future Scope
I'm excited to explore new ways to improve every aspect of our customers' visits as we look to the future of our restaurant experience. I understand that the restaurant experience is more than just the food. We want to include everything from seamless reservations to efficient checkouts, all while ensuring that every member of our diverse age group of diners - from children to older adults - feels welcome and catered to. Aside from practical considerations, dining out should be a social and engaging experience. To that end, we're looking into ways to encourage diner interactions through a flexible curation process that allows guests to connect and enjoy the dining experience. Spotlighting the spices with alight from the ceiling. While time constraints prevented us from incorporating these exciting ideas into our initial deliverables, we are committed to innovating and improving. We intend to put these new features to the test with our customers to improve and perfect our restaurant experience, making it even more exciting, memorable, and user-friendly.
Our target customers may have limited knowledge of our culture, so we want to make the ordering process easy and provide an authentic experience at the same time. To achieve this, we came up with the idea of curated menus that revolved around a different theme every month (see Figure 13). This way, customers can explore different dishes and enjoyably learn about our culture. To further enhance the experience, the spices on the table will also change according to the monthly theme, adding an extra layer of authenticity and flavor to the meal.