ProjectProposal-AntonMikhailov
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Project: Anoto menu system for restaurants and their staff.
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Target User Group
- Low/Mid end restaurants
- Fast food
The owners are interested in cutting cost and speeding up service. Prestige is not that big an issue in this arena, which may be a concern for adding this product to a high end restaurant. The staff is largely not computer literate.
Problem Description
When selecting items from a restaurant menu, the wait time is limited by either waiter availability or lines (in the case of fast food). This can be eliminated by digitalizing the menu. This would not only eliminate wait times, but reduce the staff demands.
Problem Context and Forces
Although this would greatly increase the speed at which orders come in, it would not help much on how long they take to process. Since the user would not be able to see how busy the establishment is, it would be hard to judge wait time, and thus there would be many angry patrons who made the wrong decision. The versatility of the order may also be an issue. Special places will have to be added for comments such as "Medium Rare" or "No Pickles". The target audience may be likely to steal the pen if it is given out. Heavy public use of the pen may mean a very short life span.
Solution Sketch
Restaurant: Patron walks in and is seated, then given a special Anoto paper menu and pen to make his choices. The patron then circles the items he wishes to order along with any modifiers such as "No Onions". We may also include a box for handwritten comments, although unrecognizable handwriting quickly becomes an issue. After the patron is finished with the menu, he checks the "Order" box and the order is transmitted directly to the kitchen/bus staff. To prevent theft, we may opt for a pen that is chained to the table, although this doesn't prevent vandalism of the pen. In severe cases, we can limit this functionality to users with their own pen.
We may also opt to speed up checkout by letting the patron write his credit card number on the check along with a signature. The computer would automatically validate and charge the card so the staff knows which patrons paid.
Fast Food: Patron walks in and takes a special Anoto menu from the stack. He then uses either a special pen station provided by the establishment, or his own pen if he has one. The user will also fill out a name in print which is to be called when the order is ready. Like in the restaurant case, we will need to provide a comprehensive menu that allows for many modifiers since people often are picky about their food.
To pay, we may take several routes. The first approach is like that of the restaurant where you fill out the check (in this case combined with the menu) with your credit card info and sign it. Since patrons may be worried about their privacy this is not a likely option. It also means that the check part of the menu has to be disposed of in a safe manner so as to not put the credit card number in the wrong hands.
The second method is to set up paying stations. This means that when you complete the form and check "Order", the order would actually go into a pending state where it would stay until the paying station accepts the money. Each order form would a have a unique order number which the user would enter into the paying station.
General
Most places these days have a computer oriented ordering system which displays directly to the kitchen staff. Through middleman software, the system could be integrated directly into their system without a lot of modification. In the case of this equipment lacking, the system can be engineered to be imitate leading order systems, whatever they may be. Since the staff is often not computer literate, we must keep it as simple as possible.
Issues/Concerns
In both cases, we have a bottleneck if the user wishes to pay cash. Either a paying station is needed, or a live cashier.
Both cases are subject to pen vandalism and theft.
Places without electronic ordering systems would have a large startup cost since a lot of additional equipment is needed.
