Project Ice Cream

Our initial idea was going to be focused around two distinct user groups: people who order ice cream and the servers who serve the ice cream. After talking to several servers however, we found that in all cases they liked their existing interfaces, so we scrapped that part. No sense in doing something over that’s already been done well – that would just be setting us up to look bad. We would more likely end up designing something worse than what they already use.

So our project will now focus completely on the ordering of the ice cream from the patrons’ points of view. This will allow us to spend more time on a system that would generally require more thought than normal. Since the interface could potentially be used for the first time by many new users every day, some with no technical skills, it has to be intuitive enough the first time around that users can just pick it up.

1. The need we are trying to address is the confusion and time waste when people order ice cream. Anyone ordering ice cream at any ice cream store can fall into the category of our user. This ranges from an eight year old spending his allowance to a seventy-six year old retired Wall Street executive out on a date with his wife. Since going out for ice cream is a national/international pastime, we can’t easily generalize our user base to any particular demographic.


2. We couldn’t find any existing solution to our problem from the customer’s point of view. We did however encounter a well designed existing system already in place for the ice cream servers; hence we dropped our initial decision to design two distinct, but integrated systems.


3. The core of our system is simply a mechanism for users, ice cream store patrons in this case, to place their orders through a computer interface. With ice cream being a recreational activity, the interface must be simple and easy to use. After leaving the store, customers should be looking forward to another positive and fun experience as opposed to dreading coming back and having to deal with a clunky interface again. Aside from obviously being able to purchase ice cream, users will be able to view other food items the store may offer. All items will also include pictures to help guide user’s choices. The interface for ice cream will have the most options and will therefore be the most intricate, requiring various flavors, toppings, and cone and cup sizes. Once an order is complete, the user will have an option to pay with either cash or credit card. They can of course go back and modify their order at any point before this – payment is finalization and confirmation.



4. An easy task would be for an average person (has had exposure to computers and other associated technology) to place an order for an ice cream and pay with their credit card.

   
   

   A medium task would be for a senior citizen who has extremely little, if any at all, exposure to technology to place an ice cream order for them and their spouse. The goal of this task is to verify that non-technical users are not intimidated and can hopefully learn on the fly.

   
   

   A hard task would be for a single adult to visit the ice cream store with their child and a group of their friends. The order will be complicated because all of the children want different flavors and toppings. The added distraction of watching all the children as they order is a further test on the usability of the interface. This task mostly serves to make sure our interface performs well when we are competing for the user’s attention. We do not want our interface to be so complicated that it requires complete concentration or even a quiet room.

   
   

Ben & Jerry's

We interviewed three customers at Ben & Jerry’s, two females and one male. None of them had ordered ice cream in Amherst or at that Ben & Jerry’s before. They all said that they pretty much know what they want before-hand but frequently change their mind while in-line or at the server ordering. When the three were asked how they feel about ordering ice cream through an interface they all decided it was a good idea, assuming no one would lose their jobs to a machine. They said however that they would only prefer this system if it somehow sped up the time it takes to receive their ice cream in-hand. When asked if this would useful for ordering specials they said it would be a great idea. One point of concern for all of them was that many people may not be tech savvy enough to use a GUI and/or able to read English. They said that the ability to use it in English(Primary) and possibly Spanish(Secondary) would be a good feature to consider. They worried that users who couldn’t use the interface effectively would slow down the entire process; if there is a line behind this inept-user then these people could possibly spend more time waiting to order than they would’ve saved by using the system. They did feel a ticket ordering system would appease them if they were able to just sit down and order when they got in.

We also interviewed the Ben & Jerry’s employee working at the time. His feelings towards a GUI ordering interface were mixed. Ben & Jerry’s already offered him a system in which he was relatively pleased with. He said that on a typically cold (autumn) day there weren’t many orders to fulfill, to the point where the GUI may in fact slow down order processing for him(an experienced ice-cream server). He did say however that during the summer months and early autumn that business boomed and his average orders per hour increased ten-fold. In this situation he said that having customers queue up their orders in a machine may allow him to do them quicker. During the interview he mentioned that one of the largest time-consumers during a typical order was the customer making up his mind about which ice cream they wanted and that very often a customer would change his order after he/she makes up his/her mind.

“It takes me a couple seconds to fill up a cone, a minute at most to make a Sunday, but a customer can sit there forever trying to make up his mind.” -- Ben & Jerry’s Employee

When asked if the GUI Ordering system would improve service during busy times he said almost undoubtedly yes especially with those particularly indecisive customers.

Bart's Ice Cream

We interviewed two employees at Bart's - Lisa and Allison. The interviews lasted around 10 minutes each.

Lisa had been working at the store for awhile. She identified customers as the biggest bottleneck, mostly because they tend to be indecisive about what they want to order. Customers also have a tendency to change their minds apparently. She mentioned that the monitoring system the store already has in place to track orders and such is actually very good at what it does. In terms of actual ice cream, there are lots and lots of toppings obviously, but instead of there being a button for each one, their system has different classes of topppings for them to select depending on the price. Lisa thought that the sort of process we proposed could potentially be much faster, but because they are a small family restaraunt, many of their customers desire human interaction and might not want to use a touch screen (or might not be capable - older crowd).

Allison had only been working at Bart's a couple days and so didn't have much experience. The days she had worked were relatively slow, so she wasn't able to provide as much insight into bottlenecks as Lisa was. However, as a self-described "technically challenged" person, she echoed Lisa's thoughts on the existing employee interface for managing orders, saying that it was very easy to use and that she liked it. She mentioned some difficulties memorizing how to make all the various Sundaes the store offers though. She also suggested for the customer interface that we show actual pictures of what they'd be buying since looking through the glass at the ice cream is such a big part of the experience.

There seemed to be a general theme throughout Bart's (Ben and Jerry's too) that the existing interfaces for employees are already pretty well done. This seems to lend to us narrowing our scope to the customer interface - no sense in trying to redo something that's already been done well. There is definitely some room for improvement on the employee side though if we decide to pursue that still. Some sort of Sundae guide for new employees might be useful for instance (or other more complex orders).

Our project is going to be an automated ice cream ordering system. It will be used both by customers and employees, to place orders and fill orders, respectively. Each user group, customers and employees, will access the system through a simple touch screen. The goal of this project is to minimize customer wait time and maximize employee efficiency, therefore increasing profit.

Customers will interact with the system to pick out and place their order. For ice cream, they will be able to choose from various flavors, toppings, cones, cups, and sizes. Other food items such as milk shakes, smoothies, and fraps will also be available. People from all walks of life enjoy ice cream, so we will be making zero assumptions about the computer literacy of the customers. The interface must therefore be very approachable and extremely intuitive, much like the redbox movie rental machines. Under no circumstances should a customer need help to advance.

Employees will also have access to a separate interface which displays a queue of orders placed. While this is going to be relatively simple compared to what the customers will be seeing, we can assume the employees will have some training. Consequently, we can set the bar a little higher and make a few assumptions about this user group. So while the employee interface must still be clean and easy to use, it does not necessarily need to be as basic.

Test groups will obviously fall into two categories: customers and employees. For customers, we will test people of all ages, professions, and gender. We will not give them any advance instruction on how to use the system – just like how it would be in actual operation. The idea is that virtually anyone could potentially use this system, so we want to make sure it caters to as many people as possible. As for employees, we will focus more on the younger crowd you tend to see working at ice cream shops. In this case, we can provide a little advance instruction, similar to employee training. Employees should still be able to get around the system with relative ease though.