Final Project: Phase II - Define - Requirements Specifications

Task: Define target users that we want to cater the ePan to, create personas, product benefit specifications and propose a set of features for ePan.

Target Users:

1. Health-conscious (including young couples who do not have much time to cook
2. Large groups of friends (usually teenagers or young adults)
3. Families with young children

With the target users defined, we set about creating our user profiles and personas for these three groups of people (1 & 2 being advanced users, young children being novice users) and a fourth group – the anti-user (typically older, traditional “uncles” or “aunties” who are less tech sauvy).

Thus our product benefit specifications is defined as:

1. Physio-Pleasure
   - Ability to identify healthier choice of food
   - Easy to use and not mind taxing for users trying to relax
2. Socio-Pleasure
   - Allow interaction between multiple users at the same time
   - Allow bonding between diners
3. Psycho-Pleasure
   - A lively and vibrant feel
   - Stress relief and stimulate customers intellectually by providing health facts
   - Store high scores of customers who played the games on the entertainment system
4. Ideo-Pleasure
   - The entertainment system with educational and fun games suitable for families
   

To address these concerns, we proposed three features for the ePan:

1. cartoons for the kids,
2. stimulating single- and multi-player flash games for the older kid, hungry customer and the groups of friends, and
3. an educational game with heath facts for the health-conscious.

Feedback

One of our classmate feedback that the working executive who is trying to have some peace to relax and dine, may not want to be troubled by the kids making much noise while playing the games. Hence we suggested providing headphones in the ePan system so that kids can occupy themselves and be still while watching the cartoons quietly (especially when they finish their food before their parents).

Final Project: Phase I - Discover - Needs Analysis

Background of Producer: Fish & Co.

• Fish & Co. is a casual dining restaurant with over 10 outlets in Singapore.
• Fish & Co. is known for their fresh seafood served in Mediterranean style - in a pan, with middle range price.
• The restaurants have a nautical-themed ambient and a casual feel.

Need Analysis

Task: To define who our target users are and conduct a needs analysis of our target audience

Target Users: Fish & Co. dining customers

In order to do a needs analysis, we conducted a little ethnographic research by observing Fish & Co.’s customers during the peak dining hour (weekend 7-8pm) and took note of some of the problems they encounter. In addition to the observation, we took our own experiences and those of our friends’ and came up with the following list of common problems faced by Fish & Co.’s diners:

1. Orders taking significantly slower
2. Orders forgotten/mixed up by waiters
3. Time taken for orders to be served extended
4. Children bored and unable to run around the restaurant while waiting to be served

On top of the problems faced, we have also found out about what customers’ needs and expectations are. They include:

1. efficient service,
2. good food and dining experience that is worthy of the price and
3. choice of healthy food due to a health-concious society.

As for the company’s needs, we have come up with the following:

1. To enhance diners’ experience in the restaurant
2. Win over diners so that they will keep coming back
3. Earn more profits

With the needs found, in order to provide a win-win solution to address the needs of both the customers and the company, we came up with a product – the ePan which is essentially an electronic device (we have not yet decided whether it is hand-held or an LCD screen mounted to a table) that incorporates the following features and accomplishes the following goals:

1. Handheld electronic, wireless device / touch screen LCD
   - To accommodate the small dining area
   - Allows for easy play and maximum interactivity
2. Online food ordering system
   - Fast efficient and no frills way to order food at dinners’ own pace
3. Themed games
   - Occupies diners’ attention while waiting for food
   - Diners won’t actually “feel” the waiting time
   - Entertain diners, especially children
4. Fish and fun facts
   - Allow diners to have information on their food and choose more healthily

With the diners having a wonderful and smooth dining experience at Fish & Co., it will leave a good impression on the diners, making Fish & Co. a more outstanding place to dine at. This will help win over the diners' heart and and make them come back for more. Thus Fish & Co. will be able to earn more profits.

Feedback

Generally, our idea is liked by Mr Reddy and our classmates. They think that this device can come in handy to entertain hungry customers to take their mind off from the thought of "argh! why isn't my food being served yet?" The same can be said for kids (accompanied by their parents) who can get restless and run around the restaurants after they finish their food, disturbing other diners in the process.

One of our classmates said that there may not be an actual need to significantly cut the waiting time as it is not a fast food restaurant and waiting is part of the dining experience, but our stand is that we want to make the dining experience even better than it is now to capture the diners' heart and differentiate Fish & Co. from the other restaurants. Therefore we want to cut down on the waiting time.

Another classmate also pointed out that since Fish & Co. is not a fast food restaurant, customers may want to have the feel of being served by waiters instead of having to order their food from a system. Also, Mr Reddy suggested that electronic games for kids might not work out so well as they can be entertained by offline board games or cartoons instead.

Taking these comments into consideration, we have decided to go with our classmates’ suggestion and do away with the ordering component, since it has a totally different functionality from the entertainment system anyway.

Final Project: Project Theme Brainstorm

For the final NM4210 project, we are required to come up with a project theme for an interactive project. With this in mind, we brainstormed a few ideas:

• Online adminstration system for Music Orchestras
• Product to help promote tourism
• Interactive camera user manual
• System for taking orders and providing entertainment for Fish & Co.

Reasons behind the different themes:

1. Online administration system for Music Orchestras

• Most orchestras under the National University of Singapore, Center For the Arts face the problem of keeping records of their members. It is a mess to update members records every year when it comes to the period of keying in CCA points as some members may be overseas and uncontactable, and it is a chore for the secretary to record all members' matriculation number.
• Quater masters are in charged of keeping track of instruments loaning, and need to be around all practices in case anyone needs to loan an instrument, making life difficult for the quater masters
• Committee member have to keep track of all the leave forms of the whole orchestra, which becomes very messy
• With an online administrative system, members can update their particulars on their own immediately, taking the burden off the secretary. Members can submit online loan forms to loan instruments, so that quater masters do not have to bring the loan forms to evry practice. Members can submit leave form online for executive committee member approval for attendance tracking.

2. Product to help tourism

• Advertisement to promote tourism are static and not engaging.
• With an interactive product, such as games etc. promoting tourism will be more interesting and captivating

3. Interactive camera manual

• Camera usually comes with a thick book manual which does not help much sometimes as the explanation is not very clear
• With an interactive camera manual, users can interactively try out the simulated camera in the manual to see the different modes instead of reading

4. System for taking orders and providing entertainment for Fish & Co.

• More and more fish and seafood based restaurants are coming up and overtaking the place of Fish & Co. in customers' heart
• At peak hours, Fish & Co. quality of service can be seen to decline
• With the system, fast and accurate order taking can be performed and while waiting, be entertained by the entertainment system, thus improving dining experience

Based on the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, we finally decided to choose the system for taking orders and providing entertainment for Fish & Co. to be our project theme. As there has been no previous case of restaurants having a system to take orders and entertain, we can be sure that we are the first in the field. This will help Fish & Co. to be a unique dining place, differentiating from other restaurants which serves fish and seafood, and this impresssion with the system will reserve a place in the consumers head. With this, we can at least be sure that there will be a market for our product.