NM4210 Final Project

Our final project is about ePan, an entertainment system for Fish and Co. My group consists of Huiyan, Joel, Eunice and myself. Initially, when we first met to decide on our project, we had other ideas in mind- an administrative database system for an orchestra, a product to aid Singapore’s tourism and an interactive camera manual. Eventually, we decided on the ePan that allows online ordering and entertainment.

In the early stages, our system consists of an ordering system as well as an entertainment system. We decided on this project theme because more and more fish and seafood based restaurants are coming in Singapore and it is difficult for Fish and Co. to survive as the sole competitor. During peak hours, Fish and Co. quality of service seem to decline. We hope that with our system, faster and more accurate orders can be received and while waiting for the food to be served, they can use the entertainment system to keep themselves occupied, thus improving dining experience.

However, during the first few presentations, we realize that the ordering system was not very well received. Sakae has such technology already therefore the classmates think that it is not a new idea. Therefore, we decided to focus on the entertainment system only.

Our entertainment system consists of games, cartoons, nutritional calculator, drawing pad and gallery. Our target audience for the system would be families with kids, big groups of friends and health conscious adults. We had initial doubts on our system initially because of our broad target audience. Classmates commented that we should focus on just one group of target as it would be difficult to meet the needs of three different groups of people. However, we thought that it’s possible to cater to three groups of people because our system will be in a form of flash which is able to cater to different groups of people.

Generally, the games will consist of roughly 4 games, 2 of which for multiplayer and 2 for single player. The games will keep huge groups of friends entertained. Kids can watch the cartoons available on the system so as to minimize the chances of them running around in the restaurants. Parents can eat in peace without having to look after their kids most of the time. For the health conscious people, we have created a nutritional calculator that shows them the nutritional values in the food that they have chosen. It also provides fun facts about fish and marine life to enhance their general knowledge. We realize that students like to scribble and draw on their lecture notes when they are bored. Therefore, the drawing pad gives them the space to showcase their creativity, which can be saved to the gallery for future viewing

Classmates were generally pleased with our idea. However, My Reddy posed a question on how the entertainment system will be placed in the restaurant. We had an initial idea to clamp it on a holder that is adjustable and extendable, but comments were that it would be troublesome and distracting to the rest who are not using it. Therefore, during the final stage, we decided to have a holder under the table so that users can take the ePan out when they want to use and slide it back to the holder when they don’t want to use it.

During final reviews and feedbacks, some people suggested that the ePan is too childish and only the kids may like it. In response to complaints that the interface was too “childish-looking”, we might in future even provide customizable “skins” consisting of a variety of different colour schemes and themes to choose from that personalize the look and feel of the ePan based on individual diners’ preferences. We might also have added more interactivity to the ePan by using more animations and sound effects which would have made the ePan more visually and aurally appealing.