Overview
Children today are disconnected from the origins of the food. When visiting a new, automated technology restaurant, Eatsa, the sterility of the atmosphere stood out. This was an opportunity for us to use technology as an educational experience.
Key Skills
Research, Service Blueprint, Service Origami, Service Act Out, Service Redesign, User Testing.
I was the Arduino Lead apart from being part of the service redesign, structure build up and user testing.
Tools
Drill, Wood Cutting Machine, Arduino Uno, Flora Bluefruit LE, Flora, Rhino, Principle, Sketch
Course Advisor
7 min Read
Problem
Food origins are lost on children.
Children think that bread, potatoes and pasta all come from animals.
Current Service
The highly automated restaurant experience is technologically advanced however sterile.
Children here are placing orders through screens and collecting food from the lockers, thus making the experience completely disconnected from the food cycle.
How Might We
Redesign the current service to make it educational and delightful for children?
Service Origami
In order to understand the space layout of the current offering we recreated a model of the same. Once done we then started looking for places of intervention to create connection with the food origins.
Here a conscious decision was taken to make the restaurant completely vegetarian as the educating children about origins of non-vegetarian food is a conversation better suited for parents to deal with.
Front space model of Eatsa with added intervention of having screens which show food origins.
IPad to place food order on
Kitchen space which is behind the scene
Top view of the resturant
Through research and service origami we realized that along with knowledge there is a need to give kids autonomy to decide what to eat so that they eat their veggies. To create a delightful experience for kids we decided to have a magic wand as a means to pick the ingredients.
Bodystorming
In order to get a good estimate of the position of the screens and actual size of the space relative to the height of the kid, we enacted the service flow.
Pivot Point
Through body storming and ideation we realized that the same service could be easily provided using lesser space by making it in the form of a kiosk. This would be much more viable from business perspective and having multiple such kiosk in malls and food courts would enable reaching more kids.
Service Blueprint
Storyboard
Construction
To illustrate the service we built the proposed the kiosk and cubbies.
Aligning the screen height to that of the kid's
Kiosk Structure
Cutting a rectangular gap for the screen to go in
Testing screens and coordinating with wand
Building the cubby
Physical Computing
The wand gives feedback by changing colors, as kids go through different phases of the kiosk. The cubby or locker in which the food arrives too would light up in a splash of colors to notify when the food is ready to be taken.
Inorder to change colors of the wand from a range, the wand needed to be wireless. For this we used Neopixel strip and coded it with Adafruit Wearable Flora Bluefruit LE.
To light up the cubbies when the food arrives, we used Neopixel Matrix and coded the same using Arduino Uno.
The arduinos and neopixels were then wired closely into a plastic casing through soldering and 3d printing.
Soldered components
3D Model of the wand case
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Kiosk Screens
Kiosk Phase 1
Kiosk Phase 2
Kiosk Phase 3
Foodous Service Redesign
Kiosk
This is the first section/ phase of the kiosk which the moms and kids encounter. In this phase the kids get to pick the ingredients they wish to have in their meal..
Cubby
The cubby lights up when the meal is ready for collection.
Presentation
Below is the presentation of the service redesign of Foodous, cafe for kids.
Foodous Service Design
Space Overview
In order to better communicate the overall context of the foodcourt setting within which the cafe will exist, we set up a VR booth.
1
Too many choices per screen might lead to holding up the line.
2
Parents don’t want to have to worry about moving their kids and whatever else they may be holding (like lots of kids bags/strollers) so being able to do all the ordering in one place is easier.
3
Autonomy of choices to kids is great as long as there is fixed pay.
4
The wand needs to be re-thought as returning it might cause disappointment for the child.
User Feedback
Reflection
Physical computing used to be something which always seemed intimidating however I decided to take up the challenge. I loved it and have since reflected and realized that trying new things and challenging myself stimulates me and is something look forward to.