They have a wide selection of food which I scanned through. In the long
term the menu will disappear entirely to be replaced by a digital menu
accessed with a single key press on a smartphone. In the short to medium
term an AN application may make life a lot easier.
The text on the menu should be able to be recognised by current or very
near-term text recognition systems built in to a phone especially as
mobile phone cameras start getting to even higher resolutions. If I was
still vegetarian I don't need to see all the meat dishes. At the moment
I can identify them fairly quickly by the green V symbol but I could do
it even faster using an AN application by viewing through the video
screen. The software can highlight all the dishes relevant to my dietary
needs. This could apply to religious and allergy dietary requirements as
well as personal choices. These could be highlighted, collected from the
menu and rearranged in a menu floating in front of me in the ANW.
This could be taken a step further. Let's imagine 3 types of consumer:
1)I know what I like and I just want that
2 - I like a little variety but not too much. I usually stick to a
certain type of food but am willing to experiment.
3 - I like to try new and different things
There are two methods to identify these types: attitudes or behaviour.
Attitudes mean the individual could select which type they are or they
could go through a psychological test to determine their type. A
behaviour analysis becomes possible through the increasing amount of
real world information that will be available in electronic form, i.e.
the outernet, so previous choices in restaurants (which can be different
choices to what people make at home) are recorded and fed into a
preference management system (PMS). A PMS could adapt to changes in
behaviour patterns too.
A PMS could interact with the menu either through real world recognition
of menus or digital location-sensitive menus. By knowing a person's
eating habits it can bring up a bespoke menu so someone who doesn't like
Indian food but loves Chinese would only see Chinese food. Someone who's
a type 1 would only see what they usually eat wherever they are whereas
a type 3 gets a list of the special menu.
The Wetherspoons menu is a lot of standardised food but the evolution in
the marketplace is for bespoke products. Even in Wetherspoons a person
can select how they'd like their steak done but instead of having to
tell the staff it's transmitted from their PMS as well as any other
standard customisations like extra bread or no peas.
As assisted-GPS becomes prevalent a phone will know which table a
customer is. This can all be linked to the kitchen system making life
easier for the staff as well as the customer. Orders need never go tot
the wrong table because the staff are guided to the right one using
their AN headset. Clearing tables may be easier too as customers can
press a button on their phone in their location-sensitive menu screen to
let the staff know they've finished their meal.
As people live busier lives taking these little bits of tedium out and
getting them sorted out by what's truly becoming a digital personal
assistant makes daily activities quicker and more convenient.
No comments:
Post a Comment