Taking away aversion to ambiguity for diners, one tissue at a time
As the lead, I worked in the team of 4 designers and senior lecturer (advisor) and we held this design sprint on top of university coursework. This project was a finalist for the Crowbar Awards 2020 themed 'What's NXT' under the category of Design for Good, Digital & Innovation. We were honoured to secure the placement as the first entry from RMIT-SIM University in recent years.
Sector: Design, Innovation
Role: From research to conception and animation
Project time: 1 month
Problem statement: Singapore faces an overcrowding issue, so securing seats can be daunting in local food centers (hawker centers) for solo diners. People adapted to use tissue packets to 'chope' seats while they queue for their food, yet, it is a bad habit that many regard as inconsiderate to others. It can take up to 30 minutes to queue up for food, during which the seats cannot be used to allow other diners to finish their meals.
Commuters are used to the gesture of tapping electronic cards for commute and dining at hawker centres
Our main struggles:
• Diners find it hard to get seats in hawker centers, especially during peak hours.
• Diners don't enjoy disturbing or being disturbed during meal times.
• Diners struggle to locate their seats as hawker centers can be wide and uniform in spatial layout.
• Diners don't enjoy disturbing or being disturbed during meal times.
• Diners struggle to locate their seats as hawker centers can be wide and uniform in spatial layout.
Solution: Through concept iterations, we arrived at the following solution: Introduce 'ez-Chope', an electronic card reader to reserve seats as the default option, so that a diner only needs to check for available slots (green) , tap in (green becomes red) and enjoy their food. As shown in the following video, this solution reduces the ambiguity in the original hawker dining experience to a 1-tap gesture via the ez-Chope system. This reduces friction arising from the lack of clarity present in 'chope-ing' culture.
Key takeaway:
• I felt that we worked well together as we were a team with multidisciplinary skills (animation, product design, etc)
• I think that we were also a diverse group as everyone had different experiences and personalities, which contributed to out-of-the-box ideas
• I enjoyed that everyone voiced out their ideas and we got to learn from each other on how to facilitate and expand on ideas
• I think that we were also a diverse group as everyone had different experiences and personalities, which contributed to out-of-the-box ideas
• I enjoyed that everyone voiced out their ideas and we got to learn from each other on how to facilitate and expand on ideas
