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SMAUG'S TABLE

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Smaug's Table is a course project that's done with a team of 7 in 3 months. It's a pre-show experience for an imaginary Lord of the rings themed dining event that happens in an imaginary Lord of the rings theme park. 

MY ROLE

UI/UX designer, visual designer

USER EXPERIENCE FLOW

Smaug's table is a project that's done for the course Experience Design. We started with designing a big event regardless of the budget. Then after we have had the big event, we set out to do something that's within the budget: a pre-show experience for the event. 

 

Our big event was a Lord of the Rings dining experience that's been set in a Lord of the Rings theme park. The pre-show experience started with the waiting area outside the project room. We have designed a menu app functional prototype for the user to order the food before entering the Lord of the Rings world. The user can access the app through 3 different methods: tablet, kiosk, and print-out menu. After ordering food, the user will be given a specific token and led to the puzzle game experience followed by a ride simulation happens inside the cave.

MENU APP PLAY THROUGH

I was mainly responsible for designing the menu app in this project. To better fit the experience, the menu app was themed as a magic book and it contains two parts:

  • Choose the character: to deliver an immersive experience to the user, we decided to give the user a more related identity before entering the experience. The user will be given a token that's related to the character they chose and the order they will take later

  • Order the food: we gave the user 4 different combos that were also themed around the 4 different characters.

Playable Framer project

DESIGN PROCESS

I started by creating wireframes to communicate the user flow and design ideas of mine to my classmates and faculties. People were happy about the magic book idea and the general user flow. What I have got criticism on is that the radical menu on the character selection page did not really fit the ancient magic book style, also in a theme park setting where everyone needs to move forward the design's better be more straightforward. Also in the version of wireframe, I have designed so that the user can browse through each dishes and select them one by one and that was supposedly time-consuming and again did not fit the theme park environment.

I took the feedback and redesigned something like below. In this design, the character selection was more straightforward. And as for the ordering page, we decided to offer only character themed combo in order to curtail the time needed for the user to make a decision. Also in order to keep track of the user information, I added in the dock with circled icons to store the order information.

CHARACTER SELECT

Character select menu contains four different options: Dragon, Elf, Dwarf, and Hobbit. It serves the role of giving the user an identity that related to the story so that the user can have a more immersive experience.

FOOD SELECT

We have designed 4 different combos that are themed around the same four different characters. In a theme park setting, we should always keep the flow moving. Considering that, we decided to not offer the option of ordering dish by dish. Instead they can choose whatever combo in whatever quantity they want. 

The food illustrations are from online sources

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