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W e are at the Royal Mile Pub in Sil-ver Spring, Maryland. It is a

restaurant and bar with about 20 tablesspecializing in a wide selection of bev-erages. Its dinner menu has specialsalong with many regular food items.Alex Malison is hosting a late eveningdinner party for his sales representativesso they can see the order entry system inoperation and thus explain it to restau-rant owners. Sitting in on the presenta-tion, I note quickly that he has replacedthe little green order pads we’ve all seena million times with iPaq PDAs con-nected to the kitchen using IEEE 802.11wireless networking.

FOR CUSTOMERS, FASTERSERVICE, FEWER ERRORS, ANDCALM TECHNOLOGY

I am skeptical about the viability of asmall-screen window manager in such

a chaotic environment. I think aboutnavigation through drink menus, thenfood menus, and the midstream orderchanges, meaning the whole processmust be amended. Is another case ofuser interface design failure brewing atthe pub? Ann Marie Diogo, our serverthis evening, approaches and greets uswhile taking a PDA tethered to her beltfrom her pocket. The backlit screenfaintly illuminates her face in the dimlylit pub; she asks us what we would liketo drink. “Club soda with a twist oflime.” A couple of pen strokes, a briefglance at the screen, and she continues.“Corona Light, no twist.” Next. “Coorson tap?” A couple more pen-strokes andshe moves to the next table.

Her attention scarcely seemed on thePDA at all. When she returned with thedrinks, she took our dinner orders withequal facility. She used only a few pen

strokes and didn’t seem to navigateamong screens. Mostly she had justglanced at the screen to verify the cor-rect item had appeared. Clearly, care-ful attention had been paid to the inter-face’s usability. She hadn’t been runningher computer at all, just taking theorders. Courtesy of 802.11, the ordersappeared immediately on screens in thekitchen and bar, so she moved to thenext table rather than hurrying off toplace the orders with the cooks and bar-tenders. Having seen many dysfunc-tional attempts at automating routinetasks using pervasive devices, I was sur-prised, instead, to see an example ofWeiser’s “calm technology” working atour tableside.

FOR OWNERS, LESS WASTE,BETTER INVENTORY, ANDLOWER COSTS

As Alex introduced me to Ray Mor-rison, the Royal Mile Pub’s owner, heremarked with a wry smile that I shouldhave asked if he was giving the restau-rant owner an incentive to emphasizethe positive in the interview. Rayassured me that had been given noincentives, but was simply very positiveabout the system’s effect on his busi-ness. With the order system costingabout $30,000 to install, I wonderedhow it could pay its way compared toorder pads and pencils. “Fewer errors,better inventory control, and smallerpayrolls,” Ray said and smiled.

Food and beverages account forabout 40 percent of his costs, with about

Pervasive Computing PutsFood on the TableVince Stanford

Editor: Vince Stanford � vince-stanford@users.sourceforge.net

Applications

Why would a restaurant owner replace 50¢ paper order pads with a wireless network, palm-

top PDAs, touch screen terminals, and back-office servers? After all, order pads don’t need sys-

tems administration, present a user interface everyone understands, and are cheap. Imagine

your server navigating menus while customers try to decide on their meals, change their

minds, and shout their orders over the general din. Sounds like a recipe for disaster rather

than good service, right? To find out, I talk to Alex Malison, chief executive officer of Action

Systems Incorporated, who has deployed such a system to operating restaurants, and to own-

ers and food servers, who actually use it on the restaurant floor.

A word of caution: I found the restaurant owners so enthusiastic that it was hard to get a

balanced view from them. Maintain a healthy skepticism as you read, even though your editor

cannot avoid conveying the enthusiasm of those interviewed. Caveat emptor should always

be a guiding principal in evaluating commercial products. —Vince Stanford

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

10 percent of orders having errors whenhis staff used old-fashioned order pads.These errors meant that many mealsprepared in the kitchen were wasted,adding significant costs to his operation.Also, serving customers with the wrongmeals caused dissatisfaction, sometimesrequiring management attention or,more costs in free meals. Ray smiledagain when he said that the pervasiveorder system had reduced his error ratefrom several meals per night to aboutone every two nights. Now, on manynights all food and drink items areaccounted for on the checks, and allmeals are prepared correctly. “I onlywish we could get the bartenders tofunction at the same level as the waitstaff does,” he said.

As another benefit, now only threeservers are needed, rather than the fourto five previously required. Cutting hiscore staff requirement means lastingcost reductions and lower overhead forhis operation. Also, the data-entry sta-tion on the serving floor for processingcredit card charges previously neededthree screens to handle the traffic. He

now needs only one. This freed scarcespace on the serving floor while savingpower costs.

As orders transmit, they are pro-cessed against the inventory database,letting Ray track raw material pur-chases against the food orders and iden-tify waste or other delivery and pro-cessing problems. This capability isespecially important at the bar, whereinventory control is often a specialissue. Also, the servers now spend moretime on the floor with the customers,affording more selling opportunities.“Sales of wines are up 12 percent,desserts are up 14 percent, and I canturn the tables faster so I sell moremeals,” he told us. Overall, his revenueis up about 15 percent, making the sys-tem a commercial success.

Concerning training for the non-technical servers he employs, Ray saidthat, “Yes, there is a game included inthe system that teaches the basics ofhow to enter orders. It takes experi-enced servers about 15 minutes to getthe idea, because it works the waythey already do. I am a happy con-

vert,” he said as he returned to super-vising operations.

Also, as Figure 1 shows, the systemhas operations management functionsthat let the owner monitor the businessin real time.

FOR SERVERS, FEWER STEPS,FEWER PROBLEMS, AND MOREMONEY

Our server, Ann Marie, has foundthat the pervasive system has simplifiedher job. She used to walk to the bar,place the order, go on to other tasks,and go back to the bar when the drinkswere ready. Likewise, meal ordersrequired her to make one roundtrip toplace the order on a revolving wheelthat the chef would rotate into thekitchen. Later, when touch screenscame along, she still had to walk to thescreen and enter the order, item by item,using its menu system to transmit it tothe kitchen. Sometimes errors occurredin the transcription process, making forunhappy customers when the wrongorder came up, for stressful situations,and lower tip income. With the new sys-tem, she enters the data at tableside,checks it, and transmits it to the bar andkitchen over wireless.

She finds that the system has elimi-nated most errors—and she is happy tosee them gone. Also, she can spendmore time with each customer and han-dle more tables because she makes halfas many trips out of the serving area.So she has more pleasant customer rela-tionships and higher income. Finally,the kitchen becomes aware of ordersimmediately, so the food arrives morequickly. The system also totals thechecks, eliminating errors in arithmetic.The PDA interface keeps her posted onthe status of menu items that areunavailable because the kitchen has runout of ingredients; getting that infor-mation to her customers immediatelyhas reduced another source of their dis-satisfaction. Asked if the interface ishard to learn and use, she smiled andsaid, “No, and it would be hard to goback to pencils and order pads now.”

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Figure 1. Management functions for monitoring sales and open checks in real time,which allows quick verification of order fulfillment: (a) screen to monitor the day’soverall business; (b) screen to check table assignments.

(a) (b)

FOR THE ARCHITECT, DESIGNCHALLENGES

In observing that Ann Marie hadtaken our orders with minimum navi-gation, I asked Alex to discuss how hehad achieved this apparent ease of use.He realized from the start, he said, thattoo many menu layers would make acumbersome interface—and being“cool” because it was a PDA couldn’tmake up for functional deficiencies. Sosimply porting the touch screen menusystem from his desktop point-of-salesystem—with its hierarchical approach,detailed screens, and high cognitiveload for the server—would be a baddesign concept. So he decided to de-velop an interface designed from theoutset to use PDA handwriting recog-nition to implement a system thatwould mimic the strengths of the exist-ing written order pad system. Mostexperienced servers know the menuand make heavy use of abbreviations.His system would take advantage ofthose skills.

Analyzing the existing orderingprocess

To remind the development team thatthe goal was to make the user interfaceas simple to use as a pencil and pad,Alex started the design process by tap-ing a green order pad on the white-board in his development room. Next,he developed a detailed list of the oldorder pad’s benefits and disadvantages,detailing how it is used at each step inthe process and listing what is capturedthere. He wanted to understand itsstrengths as well as its weaknesses. Itwould not justify new capital invest-ment by the restaurant owners if heonly equaled the convenience andusability of the existing method. Hisdesign goal was to improve every majortask in the workflow significantly. Also,to identify targets of opportunity foradditional enhancements, he discussedthe restaurant’s operational problemswith the owners.

He considered the work processes,step by step, as a server takes an order,

verifies it, transports it to the bar andthe kitchen, transcribes it into thekitchen ordering system, checks for pre-vious orders that have come up, servesthe food, and processes payments elec-tronically or in cash. Particularly, hetried to observe where errors occurredand the costs they incur. Then healigned these tasks against new capa-bilities such as wireless transmission,online consistency checking, trackingguests in seats at the tables, and coor-dination with the back-office inventorymanagement system. He wanted to usethe new capabilities to make a systemthat worked for all the stakeholders inthe transaction—customers, servers,and restaurant managers alike. The ben-efits should include lower costs andoverhead for the owner, higher revenueand easier customer relationships for theservers, and faster, more reliable servicewith better attention for the customers.

With this analysis done, he wrote keyrequirements for the order system tooffer improvements in

• Reduced writing for the serversafforded by the abbreviation andcompletion feature

• Reduced errors due to online editsand eliminating unnecessary tran-scription steps

• Increased time in the serving area bytransmitting the order using 802.11,allowing fewer roundtrips for theservers

• Improved back-office functionsfor inventory control and processmonitoring

Also, new characteristics and limi-tations would have to be considered,such as battery life (with full-shiftendurance essential) and theft (high-end PDAs are inviting targets, whereyou couldn’t give order pads to athief). To address these problems, Alexselected an extended-life battery cra-dle, supporting a full shift of opera-tion with intensive backlighting,802.11 networking, and a strongtether to secure the PDA to the server’s

belt. A color screen with effectivebacklighting for the dimly lit condi-tions of restaurant evening shifts wasalso essential. A high-end ruggedPocket PC-based PDA, with goodprinted character recognition, emergedas the best candidate to meet theserequirements.

(The “Half-Hour Lunch” sidebarrecounts another restaurant owner’sexperience with a competing system.)

Understanding the workenvironment’s stresses

Alex found that the only way tomake the interface comfortable forservers taking orders at tableside wasto let them do things as they werealready doing with the pencil and pad.At tableside, servers face a challengingenvironment. They are in front of cus-tomers answering questions, makingeye contact, and offering suggestions,so the user interface needs to be asclose as possible to what they are accus-tomed to using. It cannot take muchattention to operate the PDA or theserver will be distracted and unable torespond to customers. Directly portinglarger touch screen interfaces, with multi-level menus that require too much atten-tion to manage, was out.

Relying on what servers alreadyknow

Training for people with limitedinformation technology backgroundsalso had to be considered. For exam-ple, printed character recognition is akey capability for this user interface.Alex quickly ruled out PDAs that ranthe Palm OS and its Graffiti recogni-tion system, because they require usersto learn how to print an idiosyncraticcharacter set. Alex found that serversjust wanted to take orders and thoughtthey had learned to print properly inelementary school. So pen input thatcan recognize letters as commonlyprinted was a nonnegotiable require-ment for his target platform, eliminat-ing Graffiti-based PDAs, whatever theirother virtues.

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To keep training to a minimum, thisinterface would rely on what its intended

user community already knows. TheRoyal Mile offers over 1,100 food and

beverage items, with several hundredoptional modifiers. For example, themenu has over 80 kinds of Scotch, asjust one beverage among many. Serverslike Ann Marie, who has worked at theRoyal Mile for over five years, have themenu items on active recall. Alex reliedon this level of knowledge to flatten andsimplify the interface. While it mightseem obvious that servers knows theirproduct line, the sheer number ofchoices and modifiers that customerscan make is daunting.

Paper is flat; the pervasiveordering interface should be too

As one of its features, the order padis flat. Items from a single order can bewritten without repeatedly flippingbetween different pages in the pad asthe order progresses. So Alex decidedto design his system to approximate thischaracteristic. He flattened his menutrees by using an abbreviation system,allowing many more choices than atouch screen button layout, just as

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I talked with Todd Dukes, the owner of Argus Food and Spirits,

which is housed in Madison, Wisconsin’s oldest commercial building,

constructed in 1852. It was renovated in the late 1980s, has two serv-

ing levels and a patio, and seats about 130 people. The historic build-

ing offers crowded quarters for tables, so servers had to take orders

to the kitchen, on the lower level, in batches. According to Todd,

his greeting and food preparation times were good, but the order

batches meant an average 12-minute wait time from seating to serv-

ing. Because Madison, as Wisconsin’s capital, has many state workers

who have just a half an hour for lunch, he was losing his lunch trade

to faster competitors, with lunch business falling from 25 percent of

gross revenue to about 14 percent over the past year.

Something had to be done, so Todd investigated wireless point-of-

sale systems. Once he installed the ASI WPOS system, he could serve

his tables with an average four-minute wait time, down sharply from

the previous 12. After operating the system for the past four months,

his lunch business has recovered to about 18 percent of revenues and

is still rising. Labor costs on the floor and in the kitchen have fallen,

just as in the Royal Mile Pub.

The decision to invest $30,000 in new technology was not an easy

one. The ASI system Todd selected was at the lower end of the price

range, and service was offered as part of the system price, where it was

extra cost (about $100 per hour) for other systems he evaluated. He

rejected one system that used a tablet computer with a 10.5-inch dis-

play, because the servers could not carry it and the food they were

serving. So there can be too much of a good thing, with portability

taking precedence over the larger screen wearable computers favored

in the heavy industries we covered last installment.

Todd was so ebullient that I bluntly asked him to please tell me the

problems he encountered with the system. He said that power fluctua-

tions in the building now caused server outages, but he has installed

UPS backups. Also, he wants to process credit card charges at the table,

but the system does not support that capability.

“This system has been fantastic for my business,” he said, relentlessly

returning to the positive. He had planned for a two-year payback on

the investment, but it will actually be less than 18 months. “Also, I can

chain requests, such as the side orders to go with a sandwich so that

the server will always remember to ask.”

For training, he has found that an experienced new hire needs just

15 minutes of training. “Then just set her loose on the floor. She

might stumble once or twice, at the beginning of the day, but would

be just fine.”

HALF-HOUR LUNCH

Figure 2. Fixed geometry data-driven interface with command entry at the bottom ofthe screen: (a) ordering a filet mignon; (b) ordering the side dishes.

(a) (b)

servers had done with the paper orderpad. The completion system narrowschoices rapidly, even with 1,100 items,so just a few characters can usuallyidentify an item. For example, entering“cs” might result in a choice list con-taining “club soda” and “club sand-wich.” The choice is disambiguated bycontinuing the last word of the itemphrase, for example, by extending to“csa” for the club sandwich and “cso”for the club soda.

Segmenting the interfaceThe need to select from 1,100 menu

items makes this an important issue.Too many menu levels could double, oreven triple, the pen strokes needed. Andwhen a customer changes his mind, theoperation would be even more com-plex. Alex took advantage of the seg-

mented pen entry fields on the PDA,with its separate areas for capital let-ters, lowercase letters, and numericdata, by assigning command abbrevia-tions to capitals, food and beverageitems to lower case, and quantities tonumeric areas. For example: com-mands like “customer count,” wouldbe entered as “CC” in the capitals area.Alex observed that the more regular theinterface geometry the more usable itwould be under demanding conditions.

These assignments provide a clearcontext for a server who orders itemsby printing in one area, listing quanti-ties in another, and making commandsin another, always at the bottom of thescreen. Alex also segmented the dis-play area with the upper left side foritems already ordered and the upperright for items requiring modifiers and

additional decisions. By segmentingthe interface, as well as flattening it,he let the server know where to lookon the screen at all times during theordering process, as well as where towrite.

Figure 2 shows the ordering processfor a filet mignon. The decision areain the upper-right quadrant is depend-ent on the active data item on theupper left. The data item can haveseveral lists of dependent decisions,starting with preparation instructionsand proceeding to the possible sideorders. The order grows on the left,as decisions lists cycle through theright. This fixed geometry lets theserver easily manage the interfacewhile at tableside. The “Wireless Point-of-Sale Systems” sidebar shows othersimilar approaches.

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PDAs with wireless networking to implement point-of-sale capability

exemplify how pervasive computing can push the benefits of informa-

tion technology to the tableside. The Action Systems Restaurant Man-

ager I’ve described is only one of several that are available, and they all

make similar claims, so interested parties should conduct their own

detailed comparisons, which space does not permit here. They all

operate as part of a more complete restaurant management system

that can transport the orders to the kitchen, bar, inventory, and report-

ing systems. A few of these include:

• Action Systems Inc. Restaurant Manager (www.actionsystems.com). As

our article describes, this system is based on PDAs using the Microsoft

Pocket PC operating system and can be integrated other ASI compo-

nents for inventory and kitchen management.

• Ameranth 21st Century Restaurant (www.ameranth.com). Based on

PDAs using the Microsoft Pocket PC operating system with 801.11b

wireless networking, using a third-party point-of-sale processing

server in the back office.

• Micros Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES) 3000 (www.micros.com).

Based on Pocket PC, with 802.11, and integrating with the company’s

9700/8700 Hospitality Management Systems, with components

for product, labor, and financial management, and restaurant

operations.

• Wireless Waitress (www.thewirelesswaitress. com). Based on Pocket PC

and Viewsonic Viewpad 1000 terminals and supporting order print-

ing, kitchen display, and employee scheduling modules (see Figure A).

WIRELESS POINT-OF-SALE SYSTEMS

Figure A. WPOS terminals by (1)ExecuTouch and (2) The Wireless Waitress with touchscreen button inter-faces.

(1) (2)

Intellectual propertyThis interface’s developer considers

it an advantage over alternative ap-proaches seen in competing systems.Accordingly, he applied for patent pro-tection on what he believes to be theinnovative design and utility features ofthe interface. Design Patent NumberD464,361 “Graphical user interface fora handheld computer,” was allowed on15 October 2002, and additional utilitypatents are pending. For informationon this and other current interfacepatents, check the US Patent and Trade-mark Office Web site (www.uspto.gov).The USPTO online database offers over80,000 results in response to a patentsearch of “computer and user and inter-face.” While it is impossible to evalu-ate the relevance of these patents to anyparticular project, clearly there is a sub-stantial body of patented intellectualproperty in the field of user interfacedesign that potential product develop-ers should consider.

B usiness enterprises gain the great-est benefits from pervasive com-

puting when pervasive devices areused to push information technologyout to the edges of the business wherework is done or services actually ren-dered. Integration with the enterprisedatabase and inventory control systemsis key to realizing cost reductions,improved workflow, and inventory andpersonnel management. In previousinstallments of this department, wehave seen this theme repeatedly at EliteCare, Kaiser Permanente, McKesson,Northwest Airlines, and Bath IronWorks. This seems key to the valueproposition pervasive systems offer tobusiness.

As Robert Heinlein pointed out a halfcentury ago, every technology typicallygoes through three stages:

First, a crudely simple and quiteunsatisfactory gadget; second, anenormously complicated group of gadgets designed to overcomethe shortcomings of the originaland achieving thereby somewhatsatisfactory performance throughextremely complex compromise;third, a final stage of smooth sim-

plicity and efficient performancebased on correct understanding ofnatural laws and proper designthere from

As we’ve seen, restaurant servers andoperators liked a design that capturedthe previous manual system’s strongpoints, such as flattening the menu hier-archy by duplicating the abbreviationsystem long used in the previous solu-tion. They also wanted workflow ben-efits and data-management improve-ments achieved by transcending theolder, simpler “stage one” technologyof paper and pencil, using automaticcapture, summary, and wireless trans-mission of transactions across the busi-ness. The desktop point-of-sale systemsand the associated transcription prob-lems and extra steps could be taken as“stage two” of the technology, with toomany moving parts and some bad com-promises, but still having benefits. Thepervasive, workflow- and management-process-oriented, wireless version thatis well integrated into the enterprisedatabase arrives at “stage three” or“calm” technology.

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Because this issue’s department focuses, to a considerable

degree on the ASI WPOS module of the company’s Restaurant

Manager System, we are presenting a Pervasiveness Report. This

particular system is focused on service delivery at the tableside

using a classic small screen wireless pervasive device. The factors

are designed to cover a wide range of issues, so a pervasive system

might have high scores in areas where it has features but not

address all areas. The purpose of the report is to provide a contex-

tual summary, and thus a view of the system within the broad

context of possible pervasive computing features. Readers are

welcome to correspond with the Department Editor to refine and

clarify these factors for future articles.

ASI RESTAURANT MANAGER WIRELESS POINT-OF-SALE PERVASIVENESS REPORT

TABLE APervasiveness report for MSI WPOS tableside order system

Category Function Rating

Computing infrastructure Well integrated with enterprise servers HighWireless networking Exploits 801.11 well HighMobile computing devices Wireless PDAs central to application HighDevice discovery Predefined network addresses LowService discovery Predefined application specific access LowMultimodal user interfaces Screen and pen LowPervasive databases Well integrated with enterprise database management system HighUser authentication Multi level passwords MediumSecure networking 801.11 wired equivalent privacy LowTask integration Essential to task High