Flame Broiled Interaction Design

Got to play with the touch screens at the airport burger king today before my flight today. I was actually fairly impressed with the design the screen based ordering itself. There was good visual feedback that easily led you through the steps, and the ability to change and customize my order non-linearly was nice.

There were a few labeling issues. The pictures all seemed to look the same at the small size, and i would have liked to see more prominate name lables. Also, as you add things to your order the total cost needs to be more promonate. Right now it all blends with the itemized costs.

I had a few people make some simple orders. My brother who is quite tech savvy, and is used to touch screens found the screens to have too many ways to do the same thing. For example, there is a point within ordering where you are asked if you want dessert. The user can either press a large central “no thanks” button, or the pulsing green “pay now” that they had already pressed to get to that screen in the first place.

My mother, who though not incledibly tech savvy is an iPhone user and more than competant on a computer, found the interface to be perfectly useable and had no complaints. The only thing I notices was it took her a moment to realize you could not give the macchine change, a standard precident I think people are used to from vending machines.

What I noticed thouh is that customsers never actually used he touch screens. They would walk up and be intercepted by a burger king employee, who would take their order and enter it on the touch screen like a cash register pointed the wrong way. When I asked about this I was told it was just easier this way. Whether people understand the interface or not, it is always faster to just take heir order. I actually had to ask to attendent to let me use the touch screen myself.

The machines also did not interface with the back kitchen at all. The attendent took the reciept and read the order to the back kitchen. I asked another employee about this and she told me she was pretty sure that if they let people send their orders things would “be a mess.”

After looking at all of this, I’m not convinced that touch screen ordering will really work. People read a lot slower than they talk and I think are also more systematic when presented with the grid of options. Also, having a real person there to make sure everything translates correctly for unsure users essentially eliminates the efficiency gain from having the touch screens in the first place. What I could see would be a double option like in a grocery store. Users could choose to touch screen order or to order at a standard register.

Kitchen opperations would have to be changed, and a whole different display and information system would have to be devised to help workers keep up. Delivery of an order is also a major concern, that I think might need some level of thought if this system is to work. Something closer to atlanta bread company or zaxbys would probably work better.

Some Interesting Things I Found For Info Design

Black and white connections maps
http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/InternetMap/index.html

Less art more science connection map
http://www.telegeography.com/ee/free_resources/figures/ib-04.php?PHPSESSID=895801377843f82b82f4be8a8d6467fb

Real-time Internet tracking [attacks, latency, data-flow]
http://www.akamai.com/html/technology/visualizing_akamai.html

Map of Major International Internet Routes, 2005
http://www.telegeography.com/ee/free_resources/figures/gig-03.php

International Internet Bandwidth Growth by Region, 2002-2005
http://www.telegeography.com/ee/free_resources/figures/gig-01.php

Interregional Internet Bandwidth, 2005
http://www.telegeography.com/ee/free_resources/figures/gig-02.php

Great Global Internet Map containing tons of data
http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_internet/index.php

Global Traffic Map 2008
http://www.telegeography.com/products/map_traffic/index.php

Stats for domain names over time
https://domize.com/stats/

Points in internet history visualized
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_wNnxpE79lMQ/Shqtob_6hdI/AAAAAAAAAVs/-x_ig_uUAd4/s1600-h/InternetHistory.png

Non internet specific list of good data visualization websites
http://bigpicture.posterous.com/data-visualization-and-infographics-resources-2