Developing Ideas…
The group start to list out ideas and group them together with the reference to the current situation and the example of the menu.
At first, we have these ideas:
- Coronavirus Meal,
- Energetic Meal,
- Fathers’ Day/Mothers’ Day Meal,
- Destress Meal/Relax Meal,
- Exciting Meal; and,
- Stupid Meal
Which the customers could do most of the activities alone or with the family under home quarantine and entertain themselves with different exercises.
However, while some ideas are overlapping, some of them sound interesting and is a good experience. It would be enjoyable that the customers could try all of the meals. Therefore, we have a problem with the selection of the meal.
Notes from discussion and its development.
Game Plan
After the tutorial with Peter, we have two ways/plans to solve the problem:
- Choose one meal to develop in detail
- Choose several meals to combine into a game
The group choose the game plan and the theme of experience design is life under Coronavirus.
Since the low relativity to Coronavirus and similarities of two meals, the father’s/mother’s day meal and exciting meals are cancelled.
Therefore, 4 possible results in the game:
Coronavirus = contracting coronavirus
De-stress = under quarantine,
Very stressful Exhausting = need to work from home,
Stupid = stay too long at home, losing their mind.
Distribution of Work
The group develop all the ideas together.
Then, the group divided the works into different parts: With 5 members in the team and there are currently 4 developed meals. 4 of 5 members handle one meal which details idea and visualizes into posters. Then the last member without meal would work on the cover and additional materials such as the lucky draw system and see which random generator to use.
- COVID-19 – by Laura
- Exhausting Meal – by Wing
- De-stress Meal – by Wendy
- Stupid Meal – by Tiffany
- Background (intro page) and Lucky draw system – by Ling
Lucky Draw System
For the Lucky Draw System:
- 4 random images of HK streets, each equivalent to one meal, the audience should choose the image then go to experience the meal that is equivalent to.
- Make a QR code, linking to a generator, generating number 1-4.
- Simple way: just ask the participants to cut four equal size papers from the menu and play lucky draws.
- 東南西北 (East South West North) hong kong folk game.
The group have tried to use the QR code system, but it seems it may not interest the customers. Therefore the groupmate tried out a simple way.
Designed by Ling Ngai
After tutorial with Karen, we decide to do it in more fun way and use the Hong Kong folk game as lucky draw method. It is used for people to decide their meal, similar to high-class restaurants that do not allow customers to choose their meals since the chef already decided for them. It is related to the idea of contracting COVID-19 where fate or God putting the different set of ‘meal’ on ‘customers’.
Colour Scheme
Since the activities in the menu set is very different to each other, the group decide to use this colour scheme to divide the level of the activities.
Such as:
The lightest – destress
The darkest – virus
Yellow – stupid
Orange – energetic
Title of the Menu and the Meal
To keep it simple, the name of the meal and the menu is not too long nor too short. It could be easily understood by others. The group discuss the names and the final decision is made by each member themselves.
For the stupid set, the name came from songs, lyrics and meme, such as:
- I am not crazy
- Tell me I am crazy
- Am I or are the others crazy
- People may think I am crazy but really I am bored
Then, I had chosen I am NOT CRAZY as the final decision.
Sketches
The first one and the fourth one is one of my sketches I made. Since Laura and Wendy’s style is very different and is in animated form, I try to make it more similar to them in term of colour and style.
The first one is the first draft. However, the line “waste your time” does not sound good, so the line is deleted. And its style seems too similar to destress meal.It could be better if the main colour change to more yellow and orange. Moreover, it may add more colours so it won’t be too monotone. Therefore, the divided sections in the menu page added into the cover page and more colours (with various tone and value) added.
These are some other versions that I made where it is find that the colour plates mixed well with red and light green bubbles with cover, therefore, adding more red, yellow, green and white bubbles and turning the jeans from light yellow to red colour. Moreover, it could find plates in other teammates’ covers, so added light green plates under the sofa and more different hue of yellow in the sofa. Since the main colour of the set is between light yellow to bright orange, I turned the brown colour in the background into bright orange to become brighter.
For the menu of the set, it had a similar process of transformation where the colour changed from lighter to brighter. However, it founded that the divided section is not suitable for the course, therefore, shapes and more pictograms added with the element of plates and title of the menu. It looks a pieces of cake/ fruit on the plates.
Finally…
This version is chosen for the experience design.
Final work
Restaurant of Life: This is Life Menu Set (2020) is an Experience Design made for a group project by Tiffany Lee, Laura Yiu, Wing Li, Wendy Yeung and Ling Ngai.
Feedback
After the presentation, Peter said the ideas of craziness may not enough, in term of visuals and content of the menu. And these are some feedbacks and comments from other group.
Main Point
- Customers could become stupid and feel silly.
- Able to ‘kill time’ and improve physical exertion (most of the meals)
- Able to experience other life.
- Could more involve in food/ fruits and reused in other parts
Feedbacks to other group’s “Kids, it’s candy time!!’
Please click the photo
Improvements…
After the presentation, Peter said the ideas of craziness may not enough, in term of visuals and content of the menu.
So I attempt to change the menu visually to become more interesting and craziness. At first, rebuilding the menu with irregular shapes but it feels childish and strange. Therefore, it tries to reorder the triangles into a mixture with balance and weight. It feels more rights than the first attempts. It looks like a mixture between cover page and menu page.
In the content aspect, the activities could be more “crazy” as the craziness in the meal may large in the eyes of some university students when they are doing this activity under their family’s pressure. However, for some other people, they might not think that the meal is crazy enough. Therefore, the content could be improved to meet the target.
It is a good idea to connect with other meals and sections with fruits or other food and involve in taste like group 5 had suggested. It needs further discussions, planning and tests with others to improve the design.
Tiffany LEE 