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What Can UX Designers Learn from Restaurant Experience Design?

January 13th, 2011

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, User Experience Design

This past weekend I participated in the UXcamp DC with several other members of the NavigationArts team.  A discussion led by Jimmy Chandler focused on what user experience practitioners could learn from the design of restaurant experiences. Besides the food, restaurateurs must create the mood they want to set and determine the quality of service they provide.  This unlikely comparison offers an interesting new way to think about UX web design. 

Reaching beyond the stale analogy of a website being a buffet, we talked about our expectations from a restaurant experience including what we like best and worst about dining out. We discussed how important it is for restaurant staff to anticipate needs and strike a balance between being overly attentive and having to be flagged down. Likewise, UX designers need to know a website’s customers and design for their needs. We must make the right amount of content available so that questions are answered but users aren’t overwhelmed.

In the session, we talked about how trust is incredibly important. When going to a restaurant, you’re trusting that it’s clean, that the food will not make you sick, and that you will emerge with a full belly and satisfied by the experience. When you go to a website, you’re trusting that it has answers to your questions (and that they are correct), that you’ll find what you’re looking for, and that you won’t be wasting your time.

Chandler laid out his ideas for how the two experiences are similar – both must:

• provide help
• be accessible
• be welcoming and friendly without being fake
• be responsive
• get out of the way when not needed
• provide value

That last one – providing value – seems to be the key. Whether you’re spending a pretty penny or not on a meal, you want to feel like the experience of having that meal was a good value. That’s what will make you come back and maybe even recommend the website – err, restaurant – to friends.

Next time you go to a restaurant, will you think about user experience design?