News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Boeing right's a wrong: The flight attendant button. Parent comment

Re:Boeing right's a wrong: The flight attendant button by ugh on Thursday June 23, 2011 @05:54AM (#2687310)
I have seen several restaurants in Germany try those mobile gizmos but they tend to disappear after a short time: Too slow, too unflexible. Their UI is just horrible as soon as customized orders come up. Well, their UI is probably horrible in general but extra horrible when you leave the path.

As for buttons, why not follow Larry David's lead and put a bell on every table?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Boeing right's a wrong: The flight attendant button by furyg3 on Thursday June 23, 2011 @06:36AM (#2687380)
Slowness of the interface isn't really a huge problem, because it can still speed up service and improve efficiency.

Just last week I was sitting at a terrace located a little ways away from the restaurant itself. The waitress punched in our drink orders, but we stopped her from turning around and asked her about the specials. Our beers arrived before she finished describing them.

This place had one order-taker and one or two 'runners' who delivered and bussed. Increasing latency while taking orders isn't nice... but in this case it completely obliterated message delivery time (and a whole lot of legwork).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Boeing right's a wrong: The flight attendant button by ugh on Thursday June 23, 2011 @02:57PM (#2689311)
I guess that's the problem. The restaurants I like are rather small. They have only two or so people. I guess there is apoint when the restaurant is large enough when those mobile devices pay off.
[ Parent | on HN ]