- 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:
- Orders taking significantly slower
- Orders forgotten/mixed up by waiters
- Time taken for orders to be served extended
- 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:
- efficient service,
- good food and dining experience that is worthy of the price and
- choice of healthy food due to a health-concious society.
As for the company’s needs, we have come up with the following:
- To enhance diners’ experience in the restaurant
- Win over diners so that they will keep coming back
- 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:
- Handheld electronic, wireless device / touch screen LCD
- To accommodate the small dining area
- Allows for easy play and maximum interactivity - Online food ordering system
- Fast efficient and no frills way to order food at dinners’ own pace - Themed games
- Occupies diners’ attention while waiting for food
- Diners won’t actually “feel” the waiting time
- Entertain diners, especially children - 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment