What I like about the E-Restaurant is the fact that it is convenient to be able to see the picture of the food and to choose the table the customer wants to sit at. The 24hr reservation system is flexible. Customers expecting visitors can make reservations ahead of time.
Some customers would like to have the flexibility of cancelling a reservation at the last minute without penalty. Security isssues were not formally addressed. This could pose as a problem for customers who leave their personal information on the system.
The e-Restaurant project provides an online system for making reservations and ordering food before going to the restaurant. This is appealing because I can make a reservation before arriving at the restaurant and have my food prepared for me prior to my arrival. It is definitely useful to the restaurant as an inventory management system, and when I was watching the presentation, it reminded me of a customized customer relationship management (CRM) tool. This is good for restaurants to track their customers and orders and to produce customer purchasing statistics.
My first concern with this project is the potential for abuse. I was hoping to ask the group what kind of mechanism they were planning to implement to prevent customers from making orders and failing to show up, but unfortunately there was not enough time left for questions. Requiring a credit card number to make a reservation is one suggestion, however, it requires extra overhead (such as cost to the restaurant) to implement a credit card authorization scheme (not to charge the person, but to ensure that the card is valid). It also discourages potential users of the system from using it due to the existing mistrust of Internet e-commerce that still exists in today's society. I also advise against the use of frames in the HTML. A similar effect can be implemented using HTML tables and is much more appealing. Finally, I would have liked to see the administrative/restaurant "view" completed as this interests me more than the customer interface.
The e-Restaurant demo may be viewed online at http://www.sfu.ca/~gtung/restaurant/.
I thought the overall presentation of the prototype was quite attractive and appealing to the eye. I liked how the presentation addressed the reason and motivation to implement a web-based restaurant ordering application. There was a good amount of the features described. The inventory tracking capability was a pretty nice feature of this type of application. I like how there was a comparison between the e-restaurant and a conventional restaurant and categorizing each comparison under time, food, human resources, and administration. The search and rating features were nice features to include in the design. The restaurant perspective and the customer perspective of the application was nice as well. Overall, the presentation was clear and understandable. There was a good flow in the presentation in the shifting from the introduction, features, architecture to the culmination of the prototype.
I noticed that some of the links do not work. For example, when I click on the Lobster link from the Seafood menu, that page cannot be displayed. In the meat menu, the links display the main menu, and not the dish description. It could be nice if there was some more description on the dish instead of listing the ingredients because I think it would be more appealing the customer. Also, I noticed that there were ratings for dishes, but I found no way to add a rating. There seemed to be some logistics that need to be worked out. I guess this prototype just shows how it will work because it seems that the main functions of making reservations, adding meals, and making a new account are not fully implemented yet. You could also implement the option of canceling the whole order or canceling a menu item from the order and have some type of way to pay for the order on-line, but this may be too much to do. I am also wondering about the eating-in and making a reservation part: the map is static. If it does get implemented into a dynamic map, I think there should be just a subset of the total number of tables available for on-line reservations and a subset for walk-in customers. That way, you would not risk customers booking all the tables up and have the walk-in customers without a table even though there are tables not being used. I also observed some minor spelling mistakes. Another thing that I think could be a good feature is to have specials of the day or week displayed. There could also be a way to request special items such as a birthday cake on special occasions.
| Business Perspective | An interesting and useful idea in the real life. It adopts the concept of online hotel reservation. However the target is limited to the individual restaurant. In fact the module would be most useful on the fine chain restaurants. For example a customer should be able to choose the "location" of any one of the chain restaurants under same brand. Furthermore, this module could be adopted to a "collection" of many restaurants. Customers can choose any one from a list of candidates so that this website becomes a "portal" of restaurants |
| Features Perspective | The site provides reasonable features and navigation control. However it'd be better if the customization issue has been considered. The customer's profiles could have included the preference, such as "table in the corner" or "near the window" and "prefer pork rather than beef"... This saves customers' time whenever he does the reservation. |
| Features Perspective 2 | The application intends to combine the inventory management in its "restaurant view". This is not suitable as it should be left to the local system. The information of reservation gathered from this web site is limited and should not be treated as the reference of inventory management.
For this reason, the application should focuses on its "reservation" feature, while possibly leaves an API to connected to the local inventory management system. |
| Architecture Perspective | The presentation used 2 out of 19 slides to explain its technical issues behind those functional requirements. This gives very little in-depth information and therefore made the presentation more like a marketing presentation.
The only provided 2 slides talked about some standard, generic design architecture. From this I cannot tell why such a design was chosen. The relationship between the architecture and the functional requirements has not been disclosed. Although the actual implementation is not the major focus, the closed-related design issues should not have been entirely ignored. |
| Implementation Perspective | The presentation only provided some simulated pages. No dynamic content was involved. Therefore how its 3-tier approach would be performed was not disclosed. |
| Overall | The project has an interesting business aspect and the mock-up pages were well produced. However the presentation failed to disclose enough technical background, which is closed-related to the project itself and is really what this course talked about. |
As someone who often eats out in restaurants, I can definitely see the value in the unique features that a web-based e-restaurant has to offer over conventional restaurants. Of the features mentioned in the project presentation, I especially like the idea of being able to see the floor plan, along with vacant/occupied/reserved statuses, and being able to reserve a particular table at a particular time. Plus, I really like the idea of being able to order my meal ahead of time so that when I arrive, I don't need to waste time waiting for the meal to be prepared. From the demo, the overall look n' feel of the webpage seems pretty much consistent with other online retailers, which is a good thing since this ensures that first-time customers have an easier time navigating thru the site. I'm a 'minimalist' type person, and I actually prefer the current XHTML clean-layout and quick load-up time style over a flashy (but harder to use and longer load-up time) presentation layer like Macromedia Flash. However, having said that, it's likely that there be customers out there who will place more value in a flashy and more interactive presentation layer.
From the demo, it seems like anyone on the net can simply register an account (without any concrete identification) and start reserving tables and ordering meals. If an account can be created without any verification, this leaves the e-restaurant vulnerable to malicious acts such as someone reserving a bunch of tables and ordering a bunch of food and not showing up. A possible solution is to only allow a new account to be created in person at the restaurant. It is certainly less convenient, but it is only a one-time procedure, plus it protects the e-restaurant from fraud. Another possibility is to have the customer supply valid credit card info so they are held responsible for their reservations/orders (of course, this opens up a whole can of worms like customers may resent having to give out credit card info and protecting the customer's card info from hackers). One thing that I'm curious about is how the system is able to figure out when a table is free when there are currently customers using it. Or to put it another way, how certain is the system that a time slot is free (or not free)? Most likely different customers will take up varying lengths of time, and this must be accounted for (overbooking or underbooking are both bad for business). Is the current method simply to allow the customer to specify how long they think they will eat at the table? Perhaps some data analysis can be done on the reservation history to determine a good 'guess-timate' of the amount of time a table is occupied according to certain parameters (like the number of customers in the group, the amount of food ordered, etc). On a related note, it seems like e-restaurants (in general, not just this one) has very tight timing issues. Eg: If a customer orders food ahead of time, then the customer has to show up on time, else their food will get cold. As a 'grand vision' thing, I believe that having a way for WAP-enabled phones to access the e-restaurant should prove to be quite a profitable feature.
My friend and I are planning to open up a restaruant and I understand that one of the factors in running a successful restaurant is a well managed inventory system. The eRestaurant system allows statistics to be gathered from the order histories so that the management can use the information to make sound decision on purchases. Some other interesting aspects of the system include more accurate orders taking, and the ability to show a picture of the current sitting plan in real-time. Though I dont' know how this is implemented, but I think it's a neat idea to be able to reserve your favorite table in advance. I didn't see it in the demo but I assume that if a dish is unavailable the system would be updated to reflect that as well. This is another good idea because I really hate it when I can't have what I want to eat especially when I am hungry.
While this eRestaurnat system is appealing to the management side of a restaurant, I honestly do not find this system to be that useful in the perspective of the customers. First, dinning is an experience that is affected by your mood and the current settings. Sitting in front of a computer looking at pictures and reading descriptions doesn't really help you decide what you want to have. The group empahasized that the major benefit of using this system is you no longer have to wait for your order to come. While this may be true for some small number of restaurants, in most fine restaurants, appetizers usually arrive within 2 to 3 minutes after you place your order. Besides, I don't think waiting for a few mintues for your order to come is a nuisance because you can use the time to chat with your friends or family, or to observe the atmosphere of the restaurant. The other problem with the system is that you have to plan ahead. Like I said, your appetite is affected by your mood and current settings. What you want to eat now may not be what you want to eat a few hours later. In any case, I like the idea of using eRestaurant to reserve your favorite table, to get an idea of what the menu has to offer, and to help managment control their inventory.
The thing that I liked most about this project is that it offers a convenient way to make reservations, look at the menu, and order food, all from the same location. Currently, the only way to do these things is to phone up the restaurant. I find the web to be much more convenient since I don't have to look up a phone number and it is available 24 hours a day. I am able to see pictures of the dishes which is very helpful since I do not always know what a dish looks like.
At first the e-restuarant idea seems very promising but there are some problems that I can think of. First of all, not everyone knows what they want to order when they make a reservation. This is especially a problem if they have to order for someone else. Some people may enjoy the social aspect of discussing what to order at the dinner table. I also dispute the claim of e-restaurant being "low cost advertising". Since this not just a static website that doesn't change very often, e-restaurant will probably require a full time technical staff member to maintain it which would cost a lot of money. The group also claims that e-restaurant provides a way for the restaurant to prepare early. This is only true if you require everyone to make reservations and place their orders ahead of time. People will still come to the restaurant without reservations and you cannot know what they will order. If the restaurant has been in business for while, they will have a pretty good idea of how much inventory they need for each day of the week. An interesting feature to add would be the ability to order supplies and food materials when the inventory is low. This would be useful and very integrated because the system also keeps track of inventory levels.
I think the idea of creating an e-restaurant has a lot of promise because it will streamline the eating experience. If people can decide what they want to eat before they arrive for a meal then it would allow restaurants time to prepare their meals and have them ready right when their customers arrive. The extra preparation time to prepare meals would allow chef's to prepare more complicated dishes that simply would not be possible under normal circumstances. I also like the fact that a customer feedback/review section was included for each of the food items listed on the website. I think that one of the great things about the Internet is that it allows many different users to interact and share their experiences which are a benefit to both customers and restaurants.
The presentation outlined a good basic framework for an e-restaurant system, but a couple of things were not discussed during the presentation. E-restaurant's should not solely rely on Internet bookings; not everybody can decide what they want to eat before they arrive for a meal. The classic style of taking a person's order when they arrive must still be present in order for a restaurant to succeed. The e-restaurant features should be a complement to the current restaurant experience. Also, I have a couple of suggestions regarding some features that might be useful. I noticed that you neglected to put an online payment system to go along with your online food ordering feature. I think it would be in the best interest of restaurants and users to have this ability because it provides some security for the restaurants if people do not show up for their reservation since food will already be prepared for them. It also benefits the customers since they will not have to waste time at the end of their meal since they have already paid beforehand. Another possible feature would be to have some sort of administrative side application that would allow restaurants to data mine their customer's data to see what type of preferences and dishes they order the most. I think a data mining application would be invaluable to restaurants in improving their menu to increase customer satisfaction and in the process increase their revenues. It would also allow restaurants to more efficiently purchase the right amount of certain foods needed in the preparation of their daily serving.
One of the most appealing things I found about the project is the web pages design. They were simple, easy to navigate, and aesthetically pleasing, especially the layout of the menu pages (with pictures and descriptions of food). The simplicity was like a breath of fresh air considering how congested most web pages are nowadays. Another feature I liked was the customer info/history, a customer can always keep track of or refer back to a meal in the past. Finally the online feedback feature is great for both the restaurant and customers for obvious reasons.
I noticed that on the page for making a reservation there is a layout of the restaurant with the tables colour coded for available, occupied or reserved. Although at this juncture you are only making a reservation, presumably for a future time/date, possibly even weeks ahead. So when one goes to the site to make a reservation and the layout is showing that some tables are occupied or reserved even before one enters any information, it just doesn't make sense. This can be fixed by the system actually taking the reservation information and running the table number and date/time through the database to see if it's available at the requested time. Another way will be to take the date/time and then present the layout (what's available, occupied or reserved) for that time for the customer to pick from.
During the presentation, the first thing that attracts my attention is
the delicious food background image of the PowerPoint slide, which is
very suitable for the topic. The flow of the presentation is well
organized. They first describe the target and background of the
E-restaurants, and then compare the benefit and drawback with the
conventional restaurants. Finally, give the explanation of the
architecture design. The most appealing part of the presentation is the
use case diagram, which describes the functions from both customers and
restaurants view and also the well-structured diagram layout of the
architecture design.
From the demo, I am very impressed by the graphical representation of
the reservation system. I find that the functionality is very helpful
for customers to place their reservation because they can visualize the
location of the tables and choose which tables are available. Compare to
the ordinary telephone reservation, customers might not be able to get
the overall picture. It really helps on automating the reservation
procedure and increases the usability of the overall system. Another
constructive feature of the system that keeps my attention is that after
a dish is added or removed, the total price will be shown. This in fact
helps the customers to budget the cost of their dinner. In addition,
the system allow customer to go back and modify the order before check
out, which provides flexibility to the customer change.
During the presentation, If the presenters can speak louder will make
the presentation more effectively.
The graphical reservation system can be even better if you could provide
an option that allows the customers to click on the tables from the
diagram and make their reservation. For example, when the customer
clicks on a table from the diagram, the system responses to show the
booking time slots of the table and allow customer to click on the
available timeslot and place their reservation. Also, provide a map
service to give a route to the restaurant from a specific address if
possible. Linking to the Mapquest or mytelus.com or other driving route
web application can do this. In addition, to reduce the chance of
customer forgets to show up, you might want to provide an email
notification service to remind and thanks the customer, which reserved
for a table, especially, when a reservation is made a week or a month in
advance. Besides, you could make the system more useful by providing the
cooking schedule.
Another suggestions include: Allowing modify the reservation order
afterward when customer change mind, letting the customer to specific
which order of dishes comes first and allowing no sign up for delivery
and pick up order. In the prototyping system,
The table size not shown on the graphical picture and does not know the
max rating of the rating of a dish.
The idea of e-restaurant extends the restaurant to the web and therefore to the home of customers. It provides the basic services, such as reservation, meal selection, and recommendation. The most appealing thing I found about e-restaurant is its online reservation service. On customer side, customers can take as much time as their need to choose table positions, search menu items, and investigate menu items through pictures, descriptions and feedbacks on e-restaurant's web page before making reservations. Moreover, e-restaurant provides 24-hour reservation service which is difficult for conventional restaurants to provide. On restaurant side, on-line reservation reduces human errors which are not uncommon in reservations by phone. On-line reservation also frees the staff of e-restaurant from repetitive data entry and paperwork. This allows e-restaurant to redirect labor used for back office tasks to front of the house tasks to improve customer service, which is the heart of restaurant business. The Management of e-restaurant can access immediate and up to date business critical data to adjust management strategy in a timely manner.
There are some improvements e-restaurant system can make. In current e-restaurant system, customers have to log in to their accounts to give comment/feedback for their previous visits. It's quite common that reviewers giving critical comments want to have their identification protected. The system does not provide an option to allow anonymous comments. In my opinion, it would be better if e-restaurant has two separate systems: one for making reservations, one for public reviewers. In addition, quite a few customers who are not satisfied with the service of e-restaurant may not tell the reasons and never come back. The system has all information of customers making on-line reservations. These data are invaluable resource for e-restaurant. The system can utilize these historical data to provide analytical reporting functionality. The management of e-restaurant can use the reports to analyze customer preference, discover improvements e-restaurant can make. This would be a great improvement over passively depending on customer feedbacks.
To me, the most appealing aspect was the usefulness of the system. In the eyes of the customers, the system provides a really good alternative way to satisfy their dining needs. In particular, the 24-hour reservation system offers great flexibility on when the reservations can be made. The ability to reserve a particular table, shown on a restaurant map, was a really thoughtful idea that anticipated the needs of some of the more "picky" customers. Furthermore, I believe that the ability to pre-order the food does save the customer's time, which I think will be widely appreciated. Even when the customers are not ordering or making reservations through the system, the availability of pictures and reviews of the food gives them a idea on what they will order when they actually go to the restaurant. Overall, I think the e-restaurant system is a nice complement to the existing system of ordering and making reservations. If there were such a system in place for a restaurant, I would make use of it.
However, there are some design aspects of the system that I did not like as much. First of all, I believe there is too much personal information that the users need to input when they sign up. Why don't you mimic the existing system and just use a name and phone number instead? The users are more familiar to that way of doing things and thus less resistance. Furthermore, most users probably don't want another to remember another password and also tend to forget their password. Is there a mechanism in place that resets the password? From the demo, I don't believe there was an automated system in place for that. Finally, was there a reason for keeping the ordering history? Even though I personally don't like people analyzing my ordering history, analyzing the ordering history of a customer is a feature that can be implemented. Through analysis, you may be able to recommend dishes they might like (say if the person orders spicy food a lot, then recommend some spicy dishes). Or for convenience, add a shortcut to their favourite dish (i.e. the dish that they ordered most).
At first glance this project seemed as though it left little room for innovation or research, and was a repeat of existing technologies on the internet. The idea of attracting users to your site by having an account for them is common place on the internet. Email perhaps is the best example, in that the user is given a free service to be bombarded by advertisements from their host. The idea that restaurants would come together to form one site does not at first seem practical. These companies are in competition with each other, and if they are all a part of the same collaboration, it does not give them any advantage. The user however stands to gain much convenience by this, and that is where I am most curious about this project, and would like to see some expansions.
As previously mentioned, the idea that restaurants would want to join a collaboration does not seem all that convincing. Many restaurants who are looking to be online, are already on the internet. After all, the internet is not a new thing for business and marketing. For this idea to take off you need to have a large customer base to attract restaurants, but at the same time, you need a large client base to attract customers. In order to break this cycle, I suggest you look at a few strategies:
Some issues come to mind with the amount of interaction involved in the site. How do you plan to enforce credibility of both restaurants and customers. If someone writes a harsh review (good or bad), how do you know it's genuine? Who would make the censorship in this case, since the restaurant is likely to favor pruning out bad reviews over good reviews. On the other hand, restaurants who post pictures of their restaurant and food, are likely to take more time in making everything look nice for the picture. Who will over see that these pictures are consistent with the actual environment. As your site is very customer oriented, you cannot afford to lose credibility from the restaurants who use your service, otherwise your customer base will fall. Another issue I wonder about is how you plan to list a restaurant on the web if your site is database driven. In other words, if the content is generated dynamically by your MySQL server, then how will anyone know which restaurants you represent without first coming to your site. Users looking for a general restaurant site will likely come across your site, but how do you plan to attract users looking for a specific site, one which is stored in your database and not known to search robots and therefore search engines.
The strong point of this project is the user interaction. Though not all of the interaction may be tractible, it is exciting to see the advanced features at work. To be able to see the food and even the restaurant layout so you can reserve a table is a great idea. I suggest you let the user give a preference for their table, rather than a reservation of the table, as restaurants will need to continually update the online view to show which tables are available. If errors are made or employees don't get around to marking a table occupied, and a table is given out, this system could be more of a hassle to the restaurant than it is worth, with double bookings occuring. Beyond this the accounts are the largest part of the project I was impressed by. I would like to help you extend your ideas with a few suggestions.
Overall I did like the ideas presented. However it was not so much in the restaurant access to the sytem, but the customer access and convenience of it all. I don't feel that the project itself makes for any great new use of the internet, but rather the advanced features you intend to develop. Of particular note, a wireless interface and the seeting plan of the restaurants are very bold ideas, of which I would be interested to see your final presentation. On the other hand, I think the amount of maintenance required by your clients to keep up their menus/photos/vacant tables/orders may be more demanding than encouraging. Keep looking into advancing features for users and their accounts and look for ways to minimize maintenance by clients. The project in general has some good ideas to pursue, most however are within your advanced features, which is where you should focus to make your project stand out from other collaborative sites on the internet.
From the presentation of this project, we can see that a lot of effort is spent to design this project. The design document provides us a deep and wide understanding of the project. It chosen an area of which the benefit of computerization is somewhat not straightforward. But the presentation was quite persuasive. Some good points of this project:
Some suggestions:
While watching the presentation on the e-Restaurant Project I realised a few things: One, I was getting hungry, and two, I need to make a reservation for this Saturday. This system would be perfect for that because I don't really like having to deal with people on the phone and on more than one occassion... well, let's just say mistakes have been made. Not only would that problem be solved, but I get to choose which particular table I want; It doesn't get much better than that for making reservations. I also appreciate the online menu feature, though I am a bit concerned about the effect it will have on employment for wait-people and the tips they receive. I'm not a very picky eater, but I can see how the limiting option say to only vegetarian cuisine would be good. Overall I would say the project was well done and seemed to integrate nicely many aspects of running a restaurant. The diagram for the breakdown of system components was clear and easy to understand. The one thing I dislike, that many other people would disagree with me about (hence I am including it in this section) is the amount of information being stored for each customer. I can see it being useful for a restaurant, but as a customer I don't feel they need to know my eating habits.
There were a few minor details I would have liked to be different. They're not that important so I'm just going to list them out: It was unclear whether I could make a reservation without making an order, which I think should be allowed; It didn't seem like once a menu item was selected it could be removed from the "shopping cart"; A place for the restaurant to show off any special features such as live entertainment and ratings or awards would be nice. My major concern however, is related to security. I'm not talking about credit card numbers and such, the big worry is bored web surfers who having nothing better to do than make fake entries, write lousy comments, and make reservations and orders they don't intend to keep. Admittedly the current system has similar problems with prank calls, but I feel that the problem will be much more prevalent on the web with the increased accessibility. Unfortunately I don't envision a way of preventing this without severely restricting the proper users. As a final note I would just like to say that creating a small app for restaurants to create the visual layout of their dining area for the reservation making functionality would probably be much appreciated by the restaurants. It would also allow a larger degree of customizability that the restaurant may want to differentiate itself from other restaurants using the same e-Restaurant system.
E-Restaurant does take the advantages of the Internet for its reservation system, advertisement, order and better management. With the eye-catching map of the floor plan view of the restaurant, customers can choose where they sit to enjoy their meal. Customers can also make their reservation any time and anywhere through the Internet or a telephone. E-Restaurant can have many types of advertisement. It shows top ten dishes of the restaurant, customers' rating for each dish and list of dishes the restaurant has. These types of advertisement also have an effect on people's making reservation because it is just one click away. When ordering a dish, customers can use the list of menu items or use the search tool to find their favorite taste. Each dish has a link showing its ingredient. With the integration of the reservation, order and inventory system, e-Restaurant can save time for its employees, no more ordering papers to pass around the restaurant and not many ordering phone calls to pick up. Everything is handled through the web. Indeed, e-Restaurant could be a future restaurant.
Although the project is good, there are some issues needed to be fixed. The issues will be discussed from specific to general issues. In the customer login section, last name is not a good unique login name since there are many people have the same last name. The restaurant should choose customer's email address as the login name. There is no information about how many seats each table has. The restaurant should give the information about the number of seats per table. After ordering dishes for picking up, new customers don't know where they can pick up the dishes. The restaurant should provide the pick up address and a map of its location for the customers. The distance for food delivery should be short because what if the delivery address of an order is too far from the restaurant. The rating system is not easy to access since it is inside the meal history page and customers need to write in order to rate the dishes. The link should be labeled "Meal History and Ratings" and customers can select the rating scale for each individual dish. If a customer would like to order for 12 people, how many dishes should he/she order? The information about number of people for a dish should be given. The website has bad alignments and filters. Customers can make a reservation to eat in, pick up or delivery on Feb 30. Alignment and filters should be improved. The e-Restaurant should provide a web interface for canceling an order or changing time of an order. It also should have a advance payment option to make customers more convenient. Last but not least, how can the e-Restaurant avoid people abusing the web reservation? What if a customer keeps on reserving a table but never shows up. The restaurant should have a database to keep track of these people and require them to deposit first. In general, the e-Restaurant website is just a normal html webpage using frames which create problems for customers if they would like to bookmark a specific page or if they would like to print the page. In addition, frames are not supported by all browsers. There are many dead links in the website. So far there is no indication of the use of mysql in the restaurant website. The map of the floor plan view of the restaurant is not generated dynamically out of a database yet. Hopefully, e-Restaurant will be fully functional and improved by the end of the term.
The most appealing feature of this system is that it allows the customers to select the tables they prefer. Very often, customers are at given a table according to the number of person. It is seldom that a customer will be given a choice of preference of the desired table location. By allowing the customers to pick their preferred tables will make it more easier for each customer to take their time in choosing the best table available for their dining period. In terms of web technology, the three-tier architecture is very interesting. Compared to a two-tier architecture, the three-tier architecture provides increased performance, flexibility, maintainability, reusability and scalability, while hidinng the complexity of distributed processing from the user.
While the system provides a rating of each dish served, there is very little information about real comments by customers who ordered this dish in the past. A suggestion of improvement is to include customers' comments of each dish served by the restaurant. By including such a feature, a potential customer will be able to get some ideas of other customers' personal experience with and objective opinion about a dish before ordering. In addition, such a feature provides information about the popularity of each dish over a period of time. As for web technology, the system claims to provide dynamic html pages that can be customized for different users. However, it appeared to provide only static html pages during the demonstration. As such, the most powerful features of Java Servlet and JSP are not fully utilized. Perhaps the demonstration should include more of such features.
Actually, I think the intention of this project is very appealing. Internet can be used in every corner of our life. Even in such a conventional field as restaurant, web-based information system can bring great fresh air into this old business field which is used to be considered as having to be there in person by most people. But now you can just go to this restaurant website and you can feel you are almost there. You can do anything now on its website before you go to the restaurant to enjoy the real delicious dishes. This application can really bring benefit for both customers and the restaurant sides from facilitating customer to improving restaurant management comparing to conventional restaurant operation mode. I really love the appealing dish samples on the web pages and some ideas about customer feedback for previous visiting to this restaurant.
But I think this project should consider further for some following issues.
During the presentation, the first thing that attracts my attention is
the delicious food background image of the PowerPoint slide, which is
very suitable for the topic. The flow of the presentation is well
organized. They first describe the target and background of the
E-restaurants, and then compare the benefit and drawback with the
conventional restaurants. Finally, give the explanation of the
architecture design. The most appealing part of the presentation is the
use case diagram, which describes the functions from both customers and
restaurants view and also the well-structured diagram layout of the
architecture design.
From the demo, I am very impressed by the graphical representation of
the reservation system. I find that the functionality is very helpful
for customers to place their reservation because they can visualize the
location of the tables and choose which tables are available. Compare to
the ordinary telephone reservation, customers might not be able to get
the overall picture. It really helps on automating the reservation
procedure and increases the usability of the overall system. Another
constructive feature of the system that keeps my attention is that after
a dish is added or removed, the total price will be shown. This in fact
helps the customers to budget the cost of their dinner. In addition,
the system allow customer to go back and modify the order before check
out, which provides flexibility to the customer change.
During the presentation, If the presenters can speak louder will make
the presentation more effectively.
The graphical reservation system can be even better if you could provide
an option that allows the customers to click on the tables from the
diagram and make their reservation. For example, when the customer
clicks on a table from the diagram, the system responses to show the
booking time slots of the table and allow customer to click on the
available timeslot and place their reservation. Also, provide a map
service to give a route to the restaurant from a specific address if
possible. Linking to the Mapquest or mytelus.com or other driving route
web application can do this. In addition, to reduce the chance of
customer forgets to show up, you might want to provide an email
notification service to remind and thanks the customer, which reserved
for a table, especially, when a reservation is made a week or a month in
advance. Besides, you could make the system more useful by providing the
cooking schedule.
Another suggestions include: Allowing modify the reservation order
afterward when customer change mind, letting the customer to specific
which order of dishes comes first and allowing no sign up for delivery
and pick up order. In the prototyping system,
The table size not shown on the graphical picture and does not know the
max rating of the rating of a dish.
In the perspective of a consumer, I find that the ability to make orders and reservations online a very appealing feature of the E-Restaurant project. With the visual presentation of food items, along with ingredient description, a customer can get a very good idea of what he/she is ordering. Most menus in traditional restaurant provide only a text description and sometimes these menus provide little help to first time visitors. Moreover, dietetic customers or customers with food allergy can really appreciate the detail ingredient description for each item on the menu. In addition, the E-Restaurant project can be very useful for someone who is looking for a good business lunch on a busy work day. With the ability to make reservation using a graphical interface, a manager can easily choose a "good" table for an important business lunch. With the ability to pre-order the food, wait time can be minimized, especially for big parties such as fridays team lunch. Ddoo Gau Bee, a Korean restaurant located near SFU, provides a similar online ordering and reservation services.
Although E-Restaurant provides some obvious benefits, the online ordering system can extend its capabilities to distinguish itself from existing online ordering and reservation system. When a customer makes a reservation, perhaps E-Restaurant can allow the user to send email invitation to other parties. While the email is sent to confirm a reservation, it can also prompt participating parties to place their orders through E-Restaurant. Each user logging into E-Restaurant will see what orders others have already placed. Since the system already keeps the order history of a user, it can easily store email addresses for the user. The user submits his friends' or colleagues' emails once, and he can simply pick the names from an address book to send the invitational email. This extension of E-Restaurant can attract more users for hosting team lunches. Another possible extension to the system would be to integrate VoiceXML into E-Restaurant. With VoiceXML, E-Restaurant can provide a more tradition alternative for users who prefer to make reservation using a telephone. For mobile phone users who use their phone to surf the internet, VoiceXML provides a feasible complement to guide the user through the system as he places an order, since small PDA devices are often hard to use as a web browser.
I believe e-Restaurant can work in many areas of the service industry from organizing large wedding parties to everyday set lunches to online dinner dates. Theme restaurants, fine-dining restaurants, and casual restaurants are ideal target markets. Pictures offer an excellent preview of the menu offerings and the dining room setting. Add a list of the music played that evening and the type of flowers that are going to be in the vases on the guests' table and you are well on your way to an exceptional e-Restaurant experience. Promoting the website to reach out to the out of town tourist is an excellent idea. Written testimonies and commentaries on the website from established food critics would be most advantageous in promoting the restaurant as well. Theme nights and promotional information can be easily disseminated. What about complaints? Perhaps, allow for customer complaints and a list of things to be offered in the future as a result of listening to their suggestions: virtual suggestion box. Overall, simply opening up access to what is available at e-Restaurant is its strongest point.
I like how vegetarians, religious people, and health nuts can be accommodated by having access to information about the ingredients so that special requests can be made. It offers a channel of communication between the customer and the chefs to provide a unique service of tailoring the food that may otherwise cause problems if ordered at the table before a waiter. What you give up in area of service in the conventional restaurant you gain with this new service of customized dinner design. There seems to be some careful consideration of tradeoffs between service provide in person versus service online.
Besides going out to restaurants for the food, people go out for the experience. Take for example theme restaurants such as Hard Rock Cafe or Planet Hollywood who rarely mention their food, but instead highlight their establishment as the place to be seen in a hip and trendy atmosphere. The e-Restaurant can follow along this line of thinking by offering an experience that would be interesting, amusing and entertaining. Drive-in's, car-hops, pizza by the slice, and scantilly clad servers are just some examples of different methods of the delivery of the restaurant concept. The food has almost taken a backseat to the experience. Take the case of car-hops in the 50's where servers in roller skates came around to take your order and served up food on a long tray that stretched the width of your car from rolled-down window to window. It would only seem fitting with new technology, there would be a new methodology for the restaurant experience. Besides serving up food, a successful restaurant has to set itself apart from the others by serving up an experience and e-Restaurant can become the new trend. Going to e-Restaurant like going to a car-hop will simply be good fun.
One suggestion might be to co-ordinate the e-Restaurant with chat rooms or online dating services on the web. This could set the stage where dates arranged online will undoubtedly need a place to meet and to dine. Why not continue with the virtual experience and book at an e-Restaurant? This experience may be a good offering for such dating services since it is simply an extension of the online experience. A new way of meeting people could perhaps be followed up by a new way of dining with people. By providing easy and precise scheduling of times, that may be just the thing for busy people to meet.
Another suggestion for this web-based system might be to accommodate a co-ordination of different meals such as a wedding party. This system is great for large bookings and special occcasions, such as weddings where people don't have to be limited to just chicken or fish. A wedding party where all the invited guests can pre-order appetizer, main course and dessert would be phenomenal and make for a interesting experience. Also, the seating arrangement feature can be used for organizing and providing a visual layout of the tables and seats. The wedding party can set the seating arrangement in some situations and offer some invited guests to pick and choose if so desired.
A good strategy may be to establish a method of ordering set lunches over the course of the week, say within the cafeteria at our university or any work place setting. Most likely lunches will be regular and advanced ordering may be suitable. So a feature to offer regular takeouts for lunch may be extremely efficient.
On the management front, there are many obvious advantages to managing costs, reducing advertising and providing some great tools to ease the life of a manager. One thing is certain, they'll never have another dine and dash. Your system contributes to a way of life and influences lifestyles of people and their dining experience. I can't wait to click on a drop down menu to find the words "there's a fly in my soup."
For customers, E-Restaurant offers two great advantages over conventional restaurants -- an on-line method to make reservations anytime of the day, and a detailed graphical menu for pre-ordering food. Your table-reservation scheduler is an effective and useful option for customers, especially if someone likes a certain section of the dining area that has a specific "atmosphere". Your demo had a good linear progression through a typical use case: register, select dining experience (eat in, take out, delivery), make a menu choice, reserve a table, order and purchase. The customer comments section is also a useful marketing tool to convince people of the security and success of your E-Restaurant.
A few issues come to mind for further development of your site. Generally, presentation is essential when advertising a restaurant and its food. In presenting your dinner selections, perhaps a "menu" metaphor could be used. For example, an opened menu with entrees, drinks, desserts, etc. could be displayed, much like what a customer would experience in an actual restaurant. Maybe for take-out meals, a "take-out" style menu could be presented. And, although this was beyond the scope of your demo, a 3-D virtual tour would be very effective in advertising the restaurant to new customers. As well, security would be a priority for customers registering to the site. Perhaps your security policies could be highlighted for customers to investigate.
E-Restaurant
The system has a very intuitive and user-friendly interface. The transaction steps flow smoothly. Entered information regarding reservations and orders can easily be modified. Food rating and comments may add values to other customers. The system also calculates the total cost of ordered items so customers can budget their meals before they place orders.
The system can be improved by adding some analytical features. For example, it can use the transaction data and customer data to help restaurant managers make predictions and draw revenue measures. Also, the system can increase customer relationship by generating discounts to frequent customers automatically. When customers make reservations, the system should also provide more information regarding table status at the reserved time. For example, if a customer would like to place a reservation at noon tomorrow, the system should inform the customer which tables will be available and the duration of the availability.