Brainstorming for my BETA Project

Interactive Design 2
Sep 22 2009
Jinhee An

1) Form :
I am thinking of an electronic touch screen menu to order meals at restaurants efficiently. It could be in the form of hardware that looks like an Air Mac book, which is a thin and movable laptop made by Apple. After opening it up, customers can order meals by touching the screen like the same functions of using an iphone. After customers input food data on the touch screen, the data will go to a chef without waiters. E-menu provides organization, detailed information about meals, and expanded views of menu applications. I believe that this is very efficient and sustainable because traditional paper menus have limits to explain their details.

2) Content :
The traditional way of ordering has become an outdated system. Why do we have to yell, “Excuse me” to order? What about applying touch screens into a menu book? Actually, this idea already exists but is not popular yet everywhere. Also, many specialists predict that touch screen menus will be growing in the future. My focus is making this idea popular with good and usable design and application having unique ideas compared to existing e-menus. There are many touch screens with different purposes all around us such as bank ATMs, subway machine and cinema ticket machines that are easy-to-use and fast. However, it is somewhat unreasonable to apply this concept into restaurant menus. Of course, some people want to order fast without wasting time, but I think food represents culture and the quality of life. Thus, many restaurants might not prefer to use e-menus because it give the appearance of negating humanity and because of reason people are not accustomed to use the machine. Therefore, in my application, I try to provide design elements that relate to the cultural identity of the food. It can be exotic for people who experience different cultures, and learned about food and culture. Also, e-menus will provide video contents to show vivid food or education contents about how to cook this food. While waiting for an order, customers can enjoy playing games related to culture or food.

3) Who are your users?
Users are customers who want to order meals easily and fast without miscommunication, and people who have their own styles to eat meals. I definitely believe that this e-menu makes people reduce time to wait for an order and makes them satisfy their taste by controlling the amount of seasoning like salt and sugar. The application domain of Menu Pad is fusion Asian casual sit-down restaurants. Many of the features provided by an e-menu would speed up ordering in these restaurants. Also, people who are interested in Asian food and feel Asian culture indirectly.

4) Little Picture|Big Picture :
For this project in a 15 week semester, I will focus on developing application ideas and design with the way to attract people and use the application easily. I am processing this project with directed research, which is pre class for the thesis. I will continually study how to apply soft culture spirit in this hard technology.