real-time ordering software
Chop Chop Club is a unique restaurant concept. Main dishes are served only at certain hours and only in limited quantities. Traditional order taking flow would face an "overlapping" problem when two waiters order the same thing at the same time. I was asked to design a real-time software solution that would make that time-critical ordering process possible.

challenges & process
The project started with understanding the operation flow in the restaurant. After spending a few evenings observing waiters and chefs during their busy hours and brainstorming concepts with stakeholders I had a basic idea of how things work and what are their main pain points and dealbreakers.

The next step was drafting a basic solution and then selecting devices and technology that was a very important part of shaping the subsequent steps of the process that should be optimized to screen sizes. We were testing commercial devices ( Apple vs Xiaomi ) and also unbranded, android based, larger touchscreens. Convenience, ergonomy, and performance were the main factors when making the final decision. The basic solution was to design 4 different applications interacting with each other: ordering application serving as a pos system, digital ticket management application, display applications showing system states, and backend system controlling and connecting everything.

This phase has finished with designing information architecture and building a low fidelity prototype to make sure that everybody is on the same page and understands the basic flow.

I didn’t develop that prototype further because of the complexity of the flow. The flow would depend on multiple users interacting at the same time so I decided that a real, coded version of the system would be the best choice to test everything. Since the software was decided to be deployed as a web application, updating code and iterating through different phases was not a problem. I took an approach of progressive enhancement, and started with a minimal version and then was adding features one by one if necessary. Luckily, I had access to every potential application user, who were often eager to give opinions or advice and express their pain points. Almost every new functionality was tested with the end-users in the real environment.

The context was also a very important aspect of the project. The operation was taking place in a stressful and intense environment so the application had to be simplified to a maximum and very task-oriented. Additionally, we were using multiple different displays with lower resolution or low viewing angles. Sometimes, the final UI adjustments had to be done using the destination display instead of a computer screen because of the lighting influence on legibility.

results - digitalizing kitchen experience
The project got bigger than expected. We have added modules to order any a la carte dish, calculate revenue, configure daily menus, and built touchscreen-enabled ticket management software for chefs, to completely digitalize the kitchen experience. In the end, we had multiple devices connected to the same platform: POS printers, tablets, laptops, and large, 4m long LED panels.