ProjectProposal-HeungTai
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Contents |
Target User Group
- Dim Sum Restaurant customers
- Get the food fast
- Faster waiter or waitress response
- Faster check process
- Dim Sum Restaurant owner
- Save wage expense
- Accurate revenue collected
Problem Description
When customers come to a dim sum Restaurant, a waiter give them tea and a sheet of paper that is full of dim sum's names. The customers pick their choices by writing the number of dishes next to the names. The paper is No Carbon Required paper (NCR paper). The customers only have to write on the top part of the paper, then the ink will be on both top and the bottom part. The top one is for the customers, the bottom one is for the kitchen. After they are finished, they will call the waiter and he will bring the paper to the kitchen. When the food is prepared, either a waiter or busboy brings the food on the customers' table. Then, after they finished the food, they will ask the waiter to check, and the waiter will get the remaining part of the dim sum paper (the top part) to the cashier. The cashier calculates the amount, and the waiter will hand the bill to the customers. That means, for each table of customers, a waiter has to come to the table four times, not including some normal customer request like iced water, one more pair of chopstick and so on. To make the problem worse, the owner of the restaurant usually hires insufficient number of waiters to serve customer since the owner wants to save as much expense as possible and the number of customers are quite unpredictable sometimes.
The top part of the dim sum NCR paper, for cashier.
The bottom part of the dim sum NCR paper, for kitchen.
Once a customer writes down what he or she wants on the top part of the NCR paper, the ink will be on the bottom part, too.
Problem Context and Forces
The user group are usually with limited education and mostly computer illiterate. Customers certainly don't want to spend any time on learning new technology to speed up the eating experience. Customers want fast service, and owners want to reduce expense in labors. The conflict of interest makes it hard to relieve the problem. Since restaurant doesn't have good security system, a owner only hire one casher (a trustworthy friend or relative of the owner). It greatly undermines the speed of billing. On Saturday and Sunday, the problem is so critical that restaurants usually have to give up the dim sum sheet routine, and use busboys to carry the dim sum and wander within the restaurant for customers to get the food which is available. Obviously, this solution has a drawback: customers may not get the dim sum they want because there are many different kind of dim sum and there are only limited number of busboys.
Solution Sketch
The digital pen/paper model and alleviate the problem a lot by eliminating unnecessary human resource. First, the dim sum's names can print on the special paper that recognized by digital pen. When customers finish picking dim sum, they can check the box at the right bottom corner on the paper. The selection is then sent to the computer in the kitchen. A screen in the kitchen will show up what dim sum is needed for which table, so the cooks can prepare the food. Second, instead of the waiter bringing a dim sum paper to the cashier, the customers can just check another box on the paper to indicate they are done and ready for check. A computer on the cashier's desk can receive the information on the dim sum paper, calculates the total amount, and print out an invoice. This model can reduce the number of times the waiter needs to come over the customers' table. Also, it reduces one of the longest waiting time within the dining process: calculating the total amount of the bill (the other one is waiting for the food to be prepared). The customers don't have to learn any new technology besides checking a box on the paper instead of handing the paper to a waiter. The owner of restaurant can have more accurate billing for customers since everything is done in computer and automatic. The duty for cashier and waiters are reduce, so does the wage expense.
