Final Project: Phase IIIa - Design Stage 1 - Information Organisation

Task: List the target audience, experience strategy, functionality and describe the Information Architecture of ePan

Overall intended audiences are the diners at the restaurant outlets in Singapore:

1. Young children of age 8 and below
2. Older children to working adults
   -Single Diner
   -Group Diner e.g. young couples, teenagers, young adults, families
3. Health conscious
   

Initially, we had doubts whether to go ahead and target such a broad range of users (as echoed by one of our classmates), but as Fish & Co. attracts a broad range of diners, and we wanted to provide a complete experience for every diner, we decided to go ahead with these different features to target these different needs.

Product benefit specification:

1. Physio-Pleasure
   - The entertainment system should be able to help customers identify healthier choice of food, while relaxing in game play
   - The entertainment system will be easy to use and not mind taxing for users trying to relax
2. Socio-Pleasure
   - Our entertainment system should allow interaction between multiple users at the same time, letting customers to enjoy the company of their friends
   - It will be good if the games can actually help bond customers through game play, improving personal relationships
3. Psycho-Pleasure
   - Our product should have a lively and vibrant feel
   - Our product will help relief stress and simulate customers intellectually by providing health facts
   - Our product can 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

Initially, for the health-conscious group of diners, we thought of using flash game to educate them about health facts about seafood dishes. However, since we already have other entertaining games in mind, I proposed the idea that we can have a function more useful to the heath-conscious diners – a dynamic nutritional calculator which calculates the nutritional content (such as saturated fats, sugars, cholesterol levels etc.) of Fish & Co.’s dishes according to diners choice. This will help those diners make a more informed, healthier choice when selecting items from the menu. They can also compare the nutritional content of different dishes to see which dish suits their particular health needs better.

Functionality of our product can be summarized as thus:

1. For Children (Age 8 and below)
   – Cartoons
   - Short in Length (about 20mins long)
   - Marine/aquatic theme
   - Entertaining yet educational
   - Audible, but not too disruptive to others (earphones provided)
2. For Health-Conscious
   – Fun Facts + ePan Calculator
   - Displays the benefits of healthy eating and fun facts of Fish & Co.
   - ePan Calculator enables diners to calculate nutritional information on the food, dessert and drinks being offered (eg. energy, cholesterol, total fat) to make a more informed choice
3. For individuals or Groups
   – Entertaining Game
   - Simple instructions
   - Engaging but short playing time of 10-15 minutes
   - Preferably marine/aquatic theme- Competitive styled game eg. Racing or score the most points
   - Option for single and multiplayer mode
   - High score to be recorded into the system

I also proposed an idea – to include a drawing pad which is very useful for every diner (from kids to adults) to exercise their creativity and entertain themselves by writing messages or drawing images which can be subsequently saved into a gallery and viewed by all diners. This idea is proposed so that diners can leave a message to show that they have been here before, giving them a sense of belonging. To filter out any obscenities, the management would have to monitor the gallery daily and remove any potentially vulgar images or messages.

Hence our Information Architecture is:

1. Home
2. Games
   a) Single Player
   - Game 1
   - Game 2
   b) Multi Player
   - Game 3
   - Game 4
3. Cartoons
4. Nutritional Calculator
   a) Appetiser
   b) Main Course
   c) Drinks
   d) Desserts
   e) Kids Menu
5. Drawing pad
6. Gallery

For our information architecture we provided the workflow and processes (in the form of a chart) as well as scenarios as to what steps take place when different groups of customers with different needs enter the restaurant and utilize our ePan.

Our next challenge is to come up with a solution on how to physically place our stylus-sensitive LCD screen (without the CPU) so that multiple users can use it with ease, while at the same time not obstructing waiters and other diners, especially since some of the outlets have limited space. The solution should also help to prevent equipment damage caused by food spills. We generally have one screen per table mounted on the table (hand-held device is not feasible because we want the customers to interact together instead of each playing with their own controller).

With these issues in mind, we came up with a few ideas:

1. Place the screen below a panel of glass under the table (not feasible because customer cannot use the ePan after his food is served)
2. Mount the screen to the corner of the table (could be bulky and blocking the diner sitting next to it)
3. Make the screen foldable/slidable and able to be placed under the table when not in use (technical constraints and hard to visualize, especially given the current holders we can get from shops)

Hence, we have decided to adopt the last solution to physically place the ePan in the restaurant.