One of the highlight of this conference was the half-day course that I registered for called “Inspiring Mobile Interaction Design,” taught by Matt Jones and Gary Marsden from the United Kingdom. I was expecting a crash course on how to design better mobile applications. Instead, the course, like its title, was about challenging yourself with current mobile phone mediums and to break out of the conventional approaches to mobile design.  One of the stories that Jones walked us through was a story of a daily interaction he had with his daughter. Everyday, his daughter would build legos before she goes to bed. Jones would ask his daughter to disfigure her lego before going to bed. As any child did, she moped, but obediently, disfigures her lego. One day, Jones asked her daughter to put away her lego again. That night, she did something different. She reached into Jones’ pocket and snapped a picture of the lego with his phone, and went to bed happily, without a word of dispute.

Coursebook

The point of this story was that the interaction wasn’t about the act of taking a picture. It was about mediating an experience between an object to a medium. It was about building a relationship using the medium. It was about an experience that took away the anxiety of losing something, but building a channel in extending that experience. I thought it was a nice little story to remind me what experience should be. A contextual moment of interwoven events.

One of the most valuable component of this conference was the eclectic and diverse background that people brought with them. There were usability experts, interaction designers, user experience researchers, industrial designers, just to name a few, who had attended the conference.  Having attended just a handful of talks from these speakers, I know the claim that I will be making in a minute will be unjustified generalizations of the limited exposure I had. Anyhow, take my insights light-heartedly and as reflective food for thoughts. Listening to these speakers, I found that these UX professionals embodied their unique continental perspectives of human-computer interaction.

Speakers from Japan had a lot of innovative enthusiasm, where they explored futuristic problem spaces, such as robotics and pervasive interaction design. Speakers from Europe had an artistic, seamless approach in designing interaction. I’m not sure how to put it in words. But it was a different kind of approach from my exposure to the industry here in the United States. In the states, we place a lot of emphasis on usability, efficiency and in maximizing results from our user research. A lot of times, it almost feels as if we are mass-producing our user research. Which really prompted me with the thought of studying abroad at Europe in learning their perspective to user experience design. This action item would take another couple of years for me to get  to, since I just finished school and am excited to go out to conquer the world. But I’ll put a pin to this one for sure.

In the end, I want to reflect on one of the most inspiring moments of this conference that almost brought me into tears. It was the closing remark made by Dr. Hugh Herr on his dedicated research on real muscle machine actuation. There were too much biomechanics in this talk for me to regurgitate, but the essence of his talk was about developing high functional prostheses that considers the understanding of  human behavior from the ground up.  In the midst of his talk, the “moment” for me was when he rolled up his trousers, exposed his prosthetic legs, and closed the talk with these profound words: “This is not tool used. This is embodiment.” Beyond brilliance.

As paraphrased from Herr, design should be found from nature, not through the advancement of technology or digital mechanisms – but fundamentally, design as a core from understanding people. The innovation of his design was not the individual mechanical parts of the device. Sure, every component has been explored to its fullest potential, but the success was not from a breakthrough in a new technology, the breakthrough was from understanding the human anatomy of the person. It was about how people interact with their own limbs. It was about how the device worked together with the human.

My badge and T-shirt

At this conference, I have constantly felt like an ant gaping up at this world. And have felt my confidence crushed. And to feel like I know nothing that I should know of. But that’s okay. It’s a good thing actually. Because one day, I’ll stand side by side with you all. A pin to this one too.

Problem statement: Examining how digital augmentation can be incorporated in the work flow processes of Panera Bread cafe and to investigate how information processing as a material can be incorporated in the design of user experience.

In response to the blog posts, Field Observation and Embedding Digital Augmentation in Panera Bread Cafe, I’ve decided to sketch 6 sketches within 30 minutes based on my ideas on how digital augmentation can be implemented. Moreover, I will look closely as to how information processes as a material, where objects can be made. This requires examining the user experience not only in terms of context, but also the device as a single thing. Mainly, I will use Buxton’s techniques that are discussed in “Sketching User Experience: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design” as a guide to this sketching exercise (1).

Mainly, I want to practice my skills in design-thinking, which comes from constant exposure to design excercises. Sketches are drastically different from prototypes. Sketches are suggestive, it proposes and questions, and needs to be tested and  challenged. As quoted by Buxton, “the investment with a sketch is in the concept, not the execution. Rather, their value largely depends on their disposability. And the skill of extracting meaning from sketches continues to develop with experiences(118).” I will be using different forms of sketching techniques, that ranges from memory drawing, presentation drawing, technical drawing and description drawing to my best advantages in conveying my ideas (121).

SUMMARY OF INTERACTIONS OBSERVED FROM PREVIOUS BLOG

1. Each server attends to the need of one customer until payment is being received.
2. Short orders are performed more efficiently.
3. When there are no customers, servers will be running other errands in the kitchen space or out on the floor.

SIX SKETCHES IN RESPONSE TO OBSERVATIONS

Sketch#1. Real-time Wristwatch Feed in Monitoring Customer Traffic

 Servers can wear a bracelet that provides real-time feed of the traffic of customer. This is further supported by the design idea of Sketch#3: OpenCV Customer Detection. This design aims to mimic a digital watch, and functions like a news feed update. A variety of information will be provided – such as, self-serving stand alarms (Sketch#4: Self-Serving Stand Automation), entering customer, exiting customer, and alarms on information of customers who left due to long line wait, and the amount of customers in the store.

By providing these information, servers can make make key decisions as to when to attend to self-serving stands or can adjust accordingly to their service. They can further request for back-up when needed.

Sketch#2. Interactive Wall that Supports Self-Serve Order

During the observation, I noticed the long line and saw how waiting time is extremely discouraging, especially for customers with short orders. A digital augmentation solution is to extend the space of the cashier and in changing the way servers and customers interact. When entering into the cafe, customers no longer need to line up. By approaching the interactive wall in the shop, a display will be triggered by a single tap on the wall. The display is a self-ordering system, where customers can complete their order themselves. This will greatly change the way users congregate in the store. Previously, customers have to wait and line up in front of the cashier. This solution can help disperse the line formation, and can change the entire user experience, where people can hang-out at desired locations.

Sketch#3. Open CV Customer Detection and Open-Source Processing Technology for Presence Detection

 At the entrance, an OpenCV facial detection camera is placed where it can detect user’s presence. It can count the amount of people who have entered and who have exited. Furthermore, the platform can be programmed in a way where it can assume that a fast exit (ex. customer enters the store and exits within 30 second) is due to a long wait time. All of this rich, contextual information can be delivered to the real-time wristwatch feed (Sketch#1). This can help servers to make quick decisions as to adjusting their work-flow and in better decision-making. Moreover, through better task-flow adjustment, it will thereby increase the efficiency of the line-up, reducing the scenario where customers leave due to long line wait.

Sketch#4. Self-Serving Stand Automation

As noted, other errands that servers need to attend to are refilling bakery items and the self-serving stand. One of the question that comes into mind is how can the server do a better job in balancing these task? One idea is that the self-serving stand can have a built-in quantity detection, where it can detect the amount of the coffee that is left. When it decreases to a certain amount, say, only 15% remaining, it will proceed and activate coffee brewing in the kitchen. After the coffee is brewed, it sends a signal to the wristband that the server wears. Each feed will be updated accordingly as a news feed. However, when the coffee finish brewing, the bracelet will vibrate to give tactile feedback to notify the server that the coffee needs to be refilled.

Sketch#5. Wizard-style Ordering System

 As noted, the interactive display (Sketch#2) on the walls supports for self-ordering service. However, how do customers pay? A design idea that was triggered from the self-serving check-in services at the airport, users can have a wizard-style ordering system that follows a three-step process: select order, view order, payment and rewards card. When an order is carried out, at the back-end, servers can prepare each customer’s order, where a ticketing-receipt will be printed, and will be handed off to each customer as they pick up their order.

Sketch #6. RF-IDs on Table Surfaces for Seated Customers

RF-IDs are inexpensive ways to track and record information, which has been conventionally used to track shipped goods. Since customers have rewards card, RF-ID tags can be incorporated to each rewards card. On the table, when the rewards card are placed, customer order can be identified. This can be reflected on a floor plan beside the cashier space, where servers can deliver food to them, since they know which order goes to which table now. Previously, servers attend to processing order, and had customers pick up their own food. Now, the situation is reverse. Customers take care of their own order without waiting, and servers can bring the food to them. Given the scenario that customers can now take care of their own orders, more manpower is alleviated from ringing up customers, and can be distributed to other things. This greatly changes the entire user experience, where customers do not have to wait in line anymore, but more importantly, can causally grab a seat, and have food be brought to them.

In sum, in the previous blog, I already have some ideas as to how digital augmentation can be incorporated at Panera Bread. For this blog, I wanted to do a quick ideation session that focuses on thinking on the spot, without being restricted in the quality of the idea.

Disclaimer: After the sketches were done, I took an extra 15 minutes in coloring the sketches. :-)

References:

1. Buxton, B. (2007). Sketching user experience: getting the design right and the right design. Morgan Kaufman

I had a list of things that I wanted to do when I enrolled for graduate school at the University of Michigan. Most of these things, I’ve accomplished – including doing a summer internship, attending the Alternative Spring Break Program, and learning new prototyping tools, like Adobe Fireworks and Axure RP Pro. However, there was still one more thing that I hadn’t done; attending a CHI competition. During October 2011, realizing that this would be my last opportunity to enter the CHI design competition as a student, I formed a group with like-minded friends and entered the competition.

List of Things to do Before Graduating

One of the things that I had always enjoyed doing was making models from user research. Most importantly, I had always found  delivering user research in a concise and efficient manner to be relatively challenging. Models can help convey important user research findings, but moreover, this process can help designers to focus on the higher-level themes and insight. With the help of visual design, you can convey user research much more efficiently. I was first exposed to model-making from a graduate course at the School of Information called SI501: Contextual Inquiry and Project Management. My role in that project was project drafter. I was in charged of taking the transcribed results and data and making them into effective, graphic presentation to stakeholders.

For the CHI 2012 Competition, we interviewed international students to examine their home recreation process. We interviewed 16 international students, and recorded 289 affinity notes. From these notes, we identified major themes (For detailed project description, please click here.

Affinity Diagramming from Interviewing International Students

However, though the affinity diagram generated major trends and groupings of themes, we need to take one step further and look at the higher-level indications as to how our user research can help us make design decision. My team mates and I started by doing a group analysis as what we thought to be the general trends. From the initial discussion section, we found that there seems to be a distinction between physical environment (place-making) and how people have initial conceptions of home from how they grew up. My team member, Ityam and I each drew our own versions of the home-making model and came together to discuss how our models differed and we further identified common themes.

My team member Ityam's model-making

My model from our affinity diagram analysis.

Reiterations of Model

Typography guide that I constructed to help guide myself consistently

We observed several important findings. The most prominent categories in regards to how students approached remembering their homes were: food-related rituals, communication with family, and memorable objects.

We also found out that there was three main phases that was involved in building a home-like experiences. One of the components is the different factors that shape perceptions of home. These include perception of the physical home, public and private spaces, models of infrastructure, weather and religion. We further attributed these as a form of place-making from the initial conceptions of home. Another component was relationship making from friends and family, where people form emotions of support, trust and care.

First Reiteration of the Initial Conceptions of Home

Based on our model, I drafted an Initial Conception of Home using Adobe Illustrator. I used circular elements to display the complexity of how people form conceptions of home (Figure 1).

Second Reiteration of Initial Conception of Home

However, it became clear that this was almost impossible to read and legibility was an issue. I made changes and rearrange the information based upon a hierarchical manner to give order to the model (Figure 2).

Third Reiteration of Home-Making Model

The first phase highlights the different factors that shape perceptions of home. For the second phase, from our discussion and interpretation, we found that when international students leave home, they try to re-create home-like experiences. They accomplish this through reattempting to create physical spaces, discovering new familiar third-spaces, and creating new independent routines. I went through several reiterations to find out the most symmetrical manner in presenting this information (Figure 3).

Lastly, the third phase shows the redefinition phase where people extend their definition of home, where people broaden their definition and conceptions of home. We found that people have better self-esteem when they have established control, achievement and definitions of their new place. Moreover, people will integrate new places and new relationships into their extended homes. We also discovered that the process of home re-creation is challenging and sometimes fails. When faced with stress, people try to increase communication with their family.

Final Home-Making Model

After modelling the three critical pieces of home-making phases, I went ahead and placed meaningful quotes from our user interview that helped support these concepts (Figure 4). In this process, I learned graphical elements such as typography and the use of color theories to help organize information. I also used graphical visual icons to help people interpret consume information without the use of words (icons such as airplanes, people figures, etc). Moreover, I learned how the process of reiteration can be used to help organize design concepts and information.

For detailed project description:  CHI 2012 Design Competition “fridgeTop” – Interactive Fridge Surface

I was exposed to Prezi several months ago in my graphic design class. I thought that it was an innovative method in achieving effects of storyboarding. In contrast to conventional storyboards, Prezi gives the viewer a chance to motion to the next frame without spoiling the element of surprise. Conventional storyboards aim to  achieve need validation that help focus on broader concept exploration and user’s needs. Using Prezi, you can achieve the same effects and can further use it to help highlight critical concepts that you would like to display.

An artist timeline will need to incorporate two components – the work of the artist and life events. I wanted to present life events in a manner to echo with the artist’s artwork, to display that connection as relevant as possible, where its objectives are similar to storyboarding. Some of the challenges that I found with working with Prezi is trying to balance transitions in a way that does not trigger motion sickness. Some of the tactics I employed was to time the transition phase and the direction it transitions toward. I also tried zoom-in and zoom-out effects to give the eye a point of engagement, thereby giving the viewer a chance to imprint the outlines and contours of the image, before zooming into its detail, reducing effects of motion sickness.

For more ideas on storyboarding, please click here.

Explaining product dimension and in the act of storyboarding

The first time that I have effectively drawn a storyboard was for the CHI 2012 Competition, fridgeTop project. During the midst of design, it happened to be winter break, where my team and I were running this project overseas. We were all scattered amongst India, Italy, United States and in Taiwan. Holding meetings remotely were difficult, especially for design meetings. Luckily, I happened to be in Taiwan at that time with my other teammate, Ian. In order to maximize productivity, we decided to meet up physically before meeting remotely with the bigger team. We started off just sketching out ideas, so we could take pictures of them. However, as we were talking, we realized there were discrepancies between our ideas. We decided to walk through step-by-step of the process through frames of sketches. As we worked out each step, ideas solidified and it became much easier to communicate and in identifying the pitfalls. After several revisions, we snapped a picture of the final storyboard with appropriate annotations and sent it to my teammates overseas. We were on the same page again.

fridgeTop End-to-End Storyboard

This was an example of how storyboards can become effective communication channels for both internal and external use. It seems like a comic strip, but it actually helps exemplify key features of the application and can demonstrate the role and scenarios the application is used for. It helps paint a story and can be quick communication tools that can help set up quick expectations and use cases of the device.

Recently, I have been working on storyboarding exercises. The focus wasn’t on the quality or the feasibility of the idea, but more about developing the scenario of the use cases. I’ll walk you through some examples, but just a heads up, some of the ideas are really far-fetched and overboard. But bare with me now (smiles). Most of the storyboard have been annotated. All of these storyboards have been developed in the ideation phase for The Living Postcard, when we were exploring the museum space.

Storyboard. One-click and it'll-remembered-it-for-you.

Storyboard. Information extension mobile application

Storyboard. Noise cancellation

Storyboard. Visual overlay and visual augmentation of vision in museum experience

Storyboard. Ambient eye-tracking and souvenir generator

Replay and Audio Capture of Museum Experience

As the concept for the Living Postcard evolved,  we wanted to focused on the different role users will enact out based on the their interaction with the Living Postcard. Specifically, we wanted to focus on an entire end-to-end experience from the time of visit to a museum to every scenario a user could potentially encounter. We also wanted to highlight some of the interactions we foresee the museum experience can be extended based on our observation from the user enactment.

Whiteboarding the storyboard the Living Postcard

Final Living Postcard Storyboard

Individual Storyboard Frame Description for the Living Postcard:

1. The visitor is greeted by a friendly staff at the Living Postcard Souvenir booth where they will retrieve a badge to accompany them throughout their museum experience.
2. The badge will identify the artworks the visitor has spent the most time engaging in.
3. At the end of their museum visit, the visitor can go to the Living Postcard Kiosk and purchase synchronized “sister” postcards that links postcard to postcard for messages. The postcard will embed all the artwork that users have spent the most time looking at. In addition, users can print additional information regarding their museum experience, such as time and date to be customized.
4. Users can mailed the sister postcard to their friends and keep the master copy for themselves.
5. Users can place their postcard as decoration in their personal space.
6. Images that was embedded in the postcard will be displayed and rotated. If users do not like a certain image, they can swipe the image away.
7. Due to the additional information customized, the experience will be more memorable and personalized for users. The user can easily share their experiences with guests and house-mates.
8. A sister postcard have been received by the user’s friend. She can directly write a post-card back to the user at the back of the post-card. The user will received a non-invasive incoming message through a subtle beam of light surrounding the postcard.
9. The user can make a swiping gesture to read the incoming message.

I have collected my food intake through an iPhone application from Feb 10 – 28, 2011, which accounts for three full weeks. This was done through an iPhone application called “dietSNAPS,” which lets users to take pictures of every meal that they ate.

I delivered entry type, time-stamp, frequencies, and description in my visualization. In addition, actual photos of the meal will be used to be more visually-engaging and to be more aesthetically interesting to look at as well. Based on Yau and Schneider (2009) article “Self-Surveillance,” they have introduced an important concept of how collecting personal data about one’s behavior can help create a sense of awareness and motivation for behavior change (24). However, a question that comes to mind is the issue of the visualization of data. As noted, different forms of data presentation can differ in how information is highlighted. Moreover, artistic approaches have been examined in representing visualizations, most notably due to the emotional value that art and design can bring. As further exemplified in Holmes’ (2007) work on eco-visualization in the effort to reduce energy consumption; she has provided an excellent example of how visualizations can effectively convey and raise awareness.

Entering entry type for a particular meal

Based on the understanding of how visualizations can reveal unexpected patterns, I have consistently tracked three weeks of data on my food intake. The time frame of the data collection was from February 10 to the 28, 2011. A total of 85 entries were recorded throughout the 21 days, of which 71 entries have corresponding pictures. I have recorded this data with the help of an iPhone application called “dietSNAPS,” which lets users to take pictures of every meal they have eaten. Each log is further documented with information on entry type (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and drinks), a time stamp, and a short text-field for users to input any descriptive text that describes the food. I have further export this data via E-mail to create my visualization.

Calender view of the app shows the daily consumption of each day

The visualization that I constructed incorporates the temporal dimension (time of the day) on the x-axis, with the frequencies on the y-axis. Each data point is an actual photograph of the food I ate, with a corresponding border color that indicates the meal type. I also experimented with other approaches. One method that I tried was to plot actual dates on the right-axis. However, after a pilot version of this visualization, I discovered that this information was not intuitive to read. Although this set of information could have provided for a better understanding as to how eating patterns could have changed from each day; this visualization will be more effective in capturing a larger data set. The biggest finding that I found was that I do not have a very consistent food intake throughout the day. Amongst the 21 days, I had only eaten five breakfasts and 8 lunches. As a result, snacking takes place throughout the day from the mid-mornings to mid-night. Therefore, I would eat huge dinners to compensate for the lack of caloric intake in the day. Moreover, my dinner tend to spam later in the evening from 8 to 11pm. Another interesting finding was that I only drink caffeine-contained liquids, such as coffee, coke and tea.

Information visualization of 21 days of food consumption

In sum, the design of this visualization allows people to track entry types and frequencies in relationship to time. Although pictures provided for an interesting presentation manner, the size of the picture will restrict the actual processing of information. Therefore, a limitation of this design is the lack of descriptive texts that illustrate the type of food that is eaten. This is compensated by a tag cloud of all of the description that was entered previously in “dietSNAPS.” This design-based visualization can help convey other types of information that a system-based visualization cannot, such as the emotional value of a picture in comparison with numbers or data points on a data.

1. Yau, N., & Schneider, J. (2009). Self-Surveillance. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 35 (5), 24 – 30.

2. Homes, T.G.(2007). Eco-visualization: combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption. In Proceedings of the 6 ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & Cognition (p. 162).

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

As observed in Feltron’s 2009 “Report on an Assessment of Demeanor”, Feltron captured a mood report based on two construct (i.e. extroversion and introversion; happy and sad) as measurements. In addition, qualitative data from interviews were provided from Feltron’s peers in contributing to the assessment of Feltron’s mood. Though results were insightful, however, issues of mutually-exclusive binary categorizations may limit the rich and complex expression of mood (affect). This blog report aims to provide a different approach on the measurement and assessment of affect. As indicated, “Affect is the experience of feeling or emotion and is a key process of an organism’s interaction with stimuli.”[1]This analysis will present methods of self-reported measures of mood and observer-rated behavior, in hopes of examining self-reported mood, mood congruence and affect display.

Feltron’s 2009 Report on Assessment of Mood

METHODS

I have generated two alternative measurements in assessing mood. The first measurement is an experience sampling mobile app survey based on a semantic differential response format referenced from the State-Trait Emotion Measure(STEM).[2] The STEM consists of five positive and five negative emotions and was specifically selected because it can effectively capture general categories of affect with enough details to describe the complexity of a specific mood. Furthermore, a semantic differential format is employed so that the respondent can be assessed on a set of bipolar adjective pairs for ease of information input. The metric of this study is through a five-point Likert scale, where the user can only select one option amongst the scale. Also, by using a randomized signal-contingent measure, the user will not be able to anticipate mood assessment. The mood assessment would be requested several times of a day.

Individual’s Self-Report of Mood through Signal-Contingent Method

Another method that will be used to measure affect would be observer-rated behaviors from close peers and family members (observers). A similar method of an experience sampling mobile app would be triggered by a GPS sensor that connects to the individual’s mobile device. The observer will be prompted to rate the individual’s affect and mood when the sensor detects that there has been more than fifteen minutes of close contact with the individual. This is an event-contingent system, where a preselected sample of the individual is asked to perform this task. This group of individuals is selected based on the individual’s self-identified close relationship and social life prior to the study. The method and metric of the survey will be in a similar fashion like the individual-survey, which is also a semantic differential response format with a five-point Likert scale based on the framework of STEM, with an additional option to input qualitative data. Responses of the mood assessment will be compiled to produce a more robust measure in assessing the individual’s affect display.

Perceived Affect Captured by Trusted Circles of Family and Friends through GPS Sensoring Technique

Perceived Affect and Observer-Rated Behaviors

STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS

One of the strength that these measures offer is to consider mood in terms of how it is represented. One of the biggest challenges with measuring mood is its transparent cognitive processes and intangibility to measure. By measuring actual affect and perceived affect, this comparison will give insights as to how mood is represented from both a personal level and from perceived affection display. Non-congruent mood between the individual and the observer does not suggest inappropriateness of mood, but could provide certain level of insights. One of the limitations of these operations is the issue of how representative and valid is the observer’s reflection. Uncontrolled variables such as biases can be heavily introduced by the observer’s own mood during these assessments. However, since no single-handed observer’s reports is used to attest for the individual’s affect, by taking the mean of a collection of observer report will provide for stronger results, therefore more robust in external validity.

RELIABILITY AND OVERALL VALIDITY OF APPROACH

The design of the methods is highly replicable based on several factors. The survey of the mobile app are all standardized and systematized for all users to ensure interval validity and to avoid complications such as researcher bias, demand characteristics and variability in measurement artifacts. The survey will be constructed based on the consideration of question bias, wording and placement to avoid anchoring effects and to ensure internal validity. As for external validity, there has been a concern as to how representative observer ratings are in relationship to the individual. This concern arises mainly due to the problem with whether the individual will alter affect display base on the relationship he or she has with the observer. This is a major concern, because there are cases where there could be potentially incongruence between actual affect and perceived affect, but is socially acceptable. This could due to hierarchical roles or demand characteristics, such as when the observer is the individual’s supervisor or mentor. A method to reduce this concern is to produce a set of criteria for selecting observers, such as issues of trust, rapport and level of comfort the individual has with the observer.

PRACTICAL USAGE IMPLICATIONS

A potential practical usage for this application is to help psychologists in building better understanding of their patient’s mental status. Current reports include self-reports from patients or diary studies. However, retrospective memory of reporting self-diaries have always been a form of concern. Using mobile application tracking patient’s mood in real time can help reduce this bias. Also, reports of this individual’s mood display from a supportive group of family and peers can help clinicians in assessing different perspectives of the patient’s condition.

Practical Implications for Clinical Physicians to Moderate Patient’s Mood

Figure 1. The view of the observation at the Panera Bread store, where the entrance is to the right.

SCOPE OF OBSERVATION

One hour of observation was spent at Panera Bread Café to better understand how digital augmentation can be incorporated in the process of food ordering, payment, restocking, and how Panera staff interacts with their customer. A quiet location near the cash registry was picked to perform this observation. This location was specifically selected, because it allows me to hear what has been ordered, thereby giving the context of each interaction between the server and the customer. This location was located near the entrance, where it also allows me to observe the traffic of customers and their reaction prior to ordering.

The objective of this observation was to investigate the kinds of tasks that a Panera server performed and to observe some of the difficulty they may encounter. This observation was performed in the morning, where roughly 80% of the customer sales are for to-go. This time period was specifically isolated to identify patterns for to-go orders.

TASKS THAT SERVERS ATTENDED TO

There are several tasks that a Panera staff attends to at the cashier: giving an initial pitch to their customers, attending orders, retrieving orders, asking for Panera membership card, and handling the payment. Other task that needs to be performed simultaneously includes restocking bakery items and refilling the coffee at self-serving stands.

TARGET AUDIENCE

A scenario of a two server shift at the cashier was observed. The main target user will be the server attending to the cashier. The server needs to attend to each customer’s needs, while performing other errands and tasks when no customers are present.

PATTERNS OBSERVED AND RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Each server attends to the need of one customer until payment is being received. This work flow demands the server to perform each component of the task sequentially until the order is completed. This imposes several redundancies in the task and can become time-consuming before the order is complicated. For instance, when the server goes and retrieves an order, the customer will be left waiting before the server can proceed to the next component of the task. A lot of time is spent walking to the designated area to perform the task, such as retrieving a bakery item.

RECOMMENDATION: One of the issues of the one-server-per-customer model is that servers may need to walk back and forth for each service. Another issue is the redundancy of the task. For example, during a more complicated order such as ordering a dozen bagels, the server will be spending most of his time at the bagel stand retrieving the order. However, the other server could have a short order of retrieving one bagel. The server will need to walk over, while it would be much easier for the other server to bring over that bagel, while the server with the short-order can proceed to payment. This could reduce the time for the server with the short-order, and will not demand too much time of the server with the longer order in this scenario. Thus, one recommendation that can be worth exploring is to examine how to incorporate division of task and in eliminating redundant task completion between servers.

2. Short orders are performed more efficiently. A short order usually consists of a simple order of coffee or a quick retrieval of a bakery item. These orders are performed efficiently, where all the server need to do is retrieve an item or give a coffee cup to the customer, where they can serve themselves at the coffee stand. However, during line-up, all customers with different orders are lined up. After completing an order, each server will ring up the next customer by pitching out, “I can help somebody here.” Customers hesitate for a second before approaching the server, where valuable time is wasted.

RECOMMENDATION: Dividing customers based on the type of order can hugely increase the efficiency. It will be much more useful for one server to be able to ring up five customers with short orders and to minimize the line-up. This can help make the waiting line shorter, so that customers will not be discouraged by a long line when they enter the store.

3. When there are no customers, servers will be running other errands in the kitchen space or out on the floor; however, approaching customers may not be noticed and will not be attended. As noted previously, some of the other tasks that server need to attend to includes running errands such as refilling bakery items and attending to the self-serving coffee stands. During these times, servers are not present at the cashier, therefore when a new customer approaches the cashier, servers may not respond in time, leaving customers waiting.

RECOMMENDATION: Servers should be able to know when there are new customers when they are attending to other tasks. This has often been accomplished by a feedback system incorporated with the door by a ringing tone. However, these can be intrusive and annoying to hear, where everybody in the shop will know when a new customer has entered.

DIGITAL AUGMENTATION AND DESIGN IDEAS

During the hour long observation, a total of 53 customers were attended. Within the 53 customers, 20 of the order were identified as short orders, which are defined as a quick to-go order that consists of either a coffee or at most a pastry to go along with it. A design idea is to change the work processes, where one server can attend to all customers with short order by an “Express Lane.” At times when there are no short orders, the server can go and support the other server by retrieving the order, while the server proceed to adding rewards to the card and in filling in the payment. In terms of digital augmentation, this can be further assisted by an OpenCV people detection at the door in detecting new customers when they walk in the door, which can be hooked to a device the server can wear, potentially a watch. The device can vibrate, and servers can know when new customers entered the door when they are performing other errands or is not attending the cashier. The device can also show the order of the normal lane, where the supporting server can read off the orders without further verbal communication in distracting the main server. However, it is important to note that this is a design solution for a two server shift in a designated time period, which has its only specific routines, which can be different for other scenarios.

Quick Sketch of Design Idea and Incorporation of Digital Augmentation

To see detailed design ideas, read Blog: Draw 6 sketches within 30 minutes on a design scenario.