Josephine Choi, Jason Kuo, Ian Wang, Kristin Wong

Josephine Choi, Jason Kuo, Ian Wang, Kristin Wong

CS 160 Group 2

Problem

Have you ever gone to a restaurant expecting a great dining experience, but instead encountered inefficient service by the staff, an unfamiliar menu, and long waits? You figure your dinner would be much more enjoyable if you had a waiter available whenever you needed him, a more descriptive menu, and the flexibility to place, change and cancel orders. Our proposal is to solve most of these problems with an automated menu service that provides the basic services of a normal waiter, with additional features and flexibility. Essentially, the automated menu service would be a touch-screen monitor located at each table, allowing diners easy access to restaurant services at any time. Our intention is to utilize the automated menu service as a mediator between diners and restaurant owners, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship. By improving the dining experience, diners will leave the restaurant satisfied. He or she will then be more likely to recommend the restaurant, thus translating into higher revenue. Increased customer satisfaction also means future visits and personal referrals.

Analysis

Currently, the main benefit of waiters is that they provide personal interaction. There are also duties that cannot be automated, such as serving the food or refilling drinks. Thus, we propose that a small wait staff be retained, in addition to the automated menu service. Nevertheless, the automated menu service can provide a potentially better dining experience to its customers. For example: you go out to a busy diner with a large group of friends. After an hour of waiting, you sit down in a tiny corner of the restaurant. Immediately a waiter is there, rushing you to order. You ask him to come back in a few minutes so you can review the menu. While looking through the menu, you find that you would like to ask the waiter for more information, but he is not available. Finally, after 20 minutes, the waiter arrives, and you order a random selection. When the food arrives, you find that the dish you ordered was not what you expected. You want to have it taken back, but you figure the process would take too long. The bill comes soon after you get your food, so your party feels rushed. You leave the restaurant completely dissatisfied.

The automated menu service would eliminate many of these problems. It features an interactive menu that allows customers to browse and search through dishes. It even provides suggestions for drinks and desserts, and customer ratings on dishes. The service is always accessible, so you can order whenever you want. Since you are inputting your own order, you’ll get what you ordered, catered to your specific tastes and eating habits. You can also pay the bill at your own leisure. An option for a real life waiter will also be provided for those who need personal assistance.

Suggested Improvements

The automated menu will consist of three primary components: (1) Food selection, (2) Payment, and (3) Surveys and Reviews. Together, these three will address all of the problems stated in the previous two sections.

Food selection would replace the entire ordering process previously handled by a live waiter. Patrons would sit down at their table and be faced with an opening screen on a console with a welcome message and an invitation to order food. Customers would be able to navigate the menu somewhat like a website. The ordering process would be facilitated by a number of features, including a search function, which enables the customer to narrow down food selection based on personal preference, a suggestion button, nutritional information, and access to previous customer reviews on menu items. In addition, diners feel no pressure to order from hovering waiters.

Payment would be very similar to payment on an online website – the diner would simply have to enter their credit card number and wait for online authentication. There would be no need to flag down a waiter in order to submit payment for the meal. All tips for busboys and other restaurant employees would also be handled through the console.

Surveys and reviews are very important to restaurant owners, chefs, and employees – they need to know if the customers are satisfied. At the end of the meal, customers would have to option of filling out general restaurant surveys as well as specific reviews on the meals ordered that evening. These would prove beneficial to both the restaurant and to future customers. This information would be stored in a database for access at ordering time for other diners. There would no longer be any guesswork involved on the part of the waiter with regards to how many past customers enjoyed a particular dish – the information would be right at the fingertips of the customer.

Experiment

In order to test the automated restaurant menu, we will first use a paper prototype of the menu interface with participants, considering independent/dependent variables and tasks involved. We will mainly test to determine how long it takes to place particular food orders from a set menu, or the food order of the participant’s choice. Later, we will use the actual prototype.

The independent variables in these tests will be the structural organization of the program. The program can be organized in either a linear fashion that loops continuously or in treelike layers. Orders can be placed sequentially or sent in all at once. One consideration with both approaches is how the program will go back when customers want to make a change before committing their order. Other independent variables are the various input methods for the order, including touch screen, keyboard, or even a voice recording.

The dependent variables in the experiment are the total elapsed time to place a food order and overall customer satisfaction. Depending on the manner in which the menu is organized, the time it takes to place an order and the user experience will vary widely.

Since people from all walks of life visit restaurants, we would like to include those who have specific eating habits, such as vegetarians, people with certain medical conditions, and people of certain religions (e.g. Hindus don’t eat beef, Jewish people don’t eat pork).

Participants’ tasks include browsing through the menu, making their selections (including specifying their instructions for certain ingredients and cooking instructions), changing/canceling their orders, and searching for particular food items. Other possible tasks may include paying the bill, filling out an optional feedback form, rating specific food items, and looking up the ratings for a particular food item.

Results from the experiment could vary. We predict that participants will take less time to place their orders, which means that they found the menu system intuitive and easy to use. However, if participants take longer than usual to place food orders or give up altogether, it means that the menu system was too complex and confusing to use. This situation could happen because participants got lost in the menu layers, or because changing their order in the middle required them to start all over for some reason. We would need to refine the design, perhaps reorganizing the structure of the ordering process, or make it easier for customers to change their order.