Amstelring

To establish a solid foundation for our project, we conducted desk research to gain a foundational understanding of key areas. Our research encompassed various topics, including:

• Different types of sustainable food and their preparation methods.
• The dietary preferences and behaviours of the elderly.
• Efficient methods to design and optimise kitchen workflows.
• Effective strategies to influence employee behaviours towards sustainable practices.
• Sustainable approaches of healthcare providers in industry.
• Design principles tailored for aged care facilities.

Our primary stakeholders include kitchen staff, restaurant staff, and elderly residents.

To gain insights, we conducted interviews with two kitchen staff members and two elderly residents during our visit to De Venser. These discussions provided a comprehensive understanding of:

• The kitchen’s workflow, meal preparation processes, internal communications and customer experience and feedback channels.
• The daily routines, dietary habits and preferences, and perspectives on sustainability of the elderly.

Our comprehensive analysis of De Venser Restaurant gives insights into the service process, providing a strong foundation for future enhancements. Key data collected include:

• The dish handover process, information exchange, and collaboration methods between restaurant staff and kitchen staff.
• The interactions between restaurant staff and the elderly, including the serving meals and providing eating assistance.
• The dining habits of the elderly, including the types of food they prefer, and their eating speed.

Through our research, we have a clearer picture of our scope, and identified several possible dimensions we plan to work from.

Service Mapping

Stakeholders Mapping

We reframe challenges for different kinds of How Might We questions (HMW), including:

• How might we increase the employees focus during service to have better function?
• How might we help part-time employees to be more sustainable?
• How might we better anticipate user demand and preferences to reduce food & water waste?
• How might we reduce paper waste in the placing order phase for elders?
• How might we encourage elderly people who are more stubborn to change to be more open to trying sustainable/plant-based food?
• How might we encourage the elderly to provide feedback and make them feel that their feedback is heard and taken seriously?
• How might we ensure that the plant-based food is appealing and delicious for the elderly?

Designing a new system requires a thorough understanding of how the existing system operates. By analyzing the current processes and identifying pain points, we can pinpoint which parts or steps hinder employees from implementing sustainable practices.

Therefore, we conducted two more in-depth interviews with one kitchen chef, and one restaurant waiter to understand the detailed aspects like:

• Workload distribution of chef and restaurant employees
• Daily operation challenges of kitchen and restaurants
• Sustainability awareness and insights of food waste
• Equipment and supplies conditions

Through the interview, we found that the excessive responsibilities placed on chefs is the main reason prohibiting the employees here taking sustainable actions.

We used mind mapping to analyse the root cause and identify core issues for the sustainability problem, based on the current restaurant and kitchen operations.

Several reasons for the current problems are:

• Cooking meat based food
• Food/material/water waste
• Paper waste
• Plastic usage of pre-made food
• Lack of sustainability concern
• Direct delivery CO2 emission
• Amstelring don’t use fresh raw materials

Through analysis, we found that Amstelring’s reliance on pre-made food is the main reasons causing the current situation.

Infographics

To summarise the user research, we visualised and communicate our insights effectively to clients by infographics.

Infographics of Chef’s workflow

Root cause analysis

Root Cause Analysis

Conclusion

After communicating with our clients in sprint review, we chose to begin with a straightforward approach: minimise paper usage in restaurants and  raise awareness about sustainability meal choices during the rest of the 20 weeks.

From there, we plan to gradually introduce scalable features to progressively achieve the ultimate sustainability goals.

During the benchmarking, we researched the industry practices in addressing the paper waste, where we identified that digital ordering and sustainable data tracking are two common practices.

Benchmarking

We ran an ideation session to make decisions for the rough solutions for later prototyping.

By the end of the session, we determined that the core element of the solution would be an ordering system. Also, we considered incorporating data analysis as a supportive element and expand feature in the future phases of design and development.

Ideation Session Results

We visualised our solution features and scenarios by the GenerativeAI tool MidJourney. We designed low-fi prototype by Figma.

Solution A – Digital Menu Screen and Tablet Ordering System

Solution B – Self-ordering Kiosk

Besides, we also analysed other sources of paper usage in the restaurant and found that paper placemats account for a significant proportion of the waste. To address this, we developed several innovative solutions aimed at reducing their impact, which could contribute significantly to sustainability efforts.

Infographics

We created infographics to highlight the significance and sustainability impact of addressing paper waste (with and without considering the paper placemat usage) through our proposed solutions.

Conclusion

Regarding the ordering system concept, solution A is preferred by our clients, which we planned to test in the next sprint. They also raised concerns about the environmental impact of digital products and associated financial costs, which we intend to assess and present during the next sprint.

After reviewing the infographics, the client agreed on solving the paper placemat issues. As a first step, we will remove the paper placemat during the user testing session in the next sprint.

We developed a high-fidelity prototype for the Digital Menu and a low-fidelity prototype for the restaurant ordering system, which were taken for testing.

Digital Menu for residents

Tablet Ordering System

Overall, we received valuable and solid feedback. Notably, during testing with restaurant staff, they expressed positivity and anticipation toward our prototype.

We once again utilised infographics to illustrate the impact of using our service—highlighting significant annual cost savings and reductions in CO2 emissions.

We improve the UI for the table ordering system. First, we designed a flexible way to place order of a mix of dishes from different menu set. Second, we designed the table occupation status by utilising the green and red colours. Lastly, we added the feature of editing the order on the UI.