Problem

Ordering at a SaladBar is a painful process! Especially in NYC. You're standing on line with people waiting behind - and you are furiously pointing behind the glass counter at the item that you intend on adding to your bowl. Carrots!! "Chickpeas???" No Carrotts! "Ok, Salad Dressing. Errr!

Opportunity

Considering the future where consumers may be wearing smart glasses on there way into a restaurant or bodega, I wanted to explore a smoother way for the communication to occur, while also keeping the integrity of a NYC salad, vs ordering online.

Result

In order to work on this project, I took a 3D scan of the salad bar, and brought it back to the office, and uploaded it into Unity, this helped me work on interactions as if I was there. I then started exploring the design concepts further in sketch. Including adding ingredient detail cards, and an item counter on the top left, inspired by visionOS. I worked back and forth between Sketch and Unity to iron out the designs, and continue on the details. I ended up with a nice salad bar ordering app where you could visualize food items where you're pointing, and populate a receipt while you are ordering.

Testing

When the prototype was ready, I initiated the test in paerson, and arranged a time to test early in the morning, to not interfere with traffic. Although it was a hectic day, luckily my planning with the 3D model was effective, and easily transportable to the real thing. I rehearsed with the store employees, and we were able to get a nice demonstration in before the weekend.

Future considerations

Would be interested in building a CMS platform for the restaurant so they could see the orders come in and react to it. So that we could have a fully functioning end-end service