TeleCafe: Coffee Over Distance

Client

Individual Project 

Role

UX Designer 

Challenge

Serving and drinking Arabic coffee is a traditional manner to show respect, love and care. The Drinking Experience DX, is about sharing the same coffee pot "dallah" in the same place and time. Every Arabian family would at least drink coffee once a day where the whole family would gather around the same pot. It is a rich medium for social interactions where older and younger generations would socialize. The process encourages social interaction and conversations between family members and friends.

However, this only can be achieved when members are physically located in the same place. What will happen when an individual, like for example international scholars, had to move away from home. Is it possible to provide the same experience over distance? How can we capture the social interactions and cultural aspects in the Arabic coffee DX and deliver them over distance. How do we share presence over distance? 

Solution 

I propose TeleCafe as a possible solution which will provide an immersive experience to support human to human interaction. This solution explores the coffee drinking experience with the functional and sociable aspects of this intimate entertainment medium. Think of coffee DX as a medium that facilitate social interaction, a platform with playful elements to support social interaction over distance.

The framework consists of two identical cafes with Arabic atmosphere set up in physically different locations. With cameras, speakers and microphones to stream a real-time experience. On each wall there is an immersive telepresence screens to stream the remote location, enabling the participants to interact with each other through a life-sized video and audio connection. The two ends can talk and see each other at all times. This setup facilitates the social interaction and encourages conversations. 

Users can engage together starting from using TeleCafe app using their personal phones. They can prepare coffee together through the wizard in the app (shown in the wireframes at the end) . This will give them the same taste they are used to. Also, as part of every social gathering, one important interaction is sharing interesting content they find on the web (funny videos, trending hashtags, photos etc.). Instead of being busy with their phones, TeleCafe will use this type of individual interaction to implement playful group social interaction over the coffee drinking experience. This can be done by allowing users to share content with each other through overlaying the content on the screen between them. Senses other than video and audio are involved to support more natural and tangible form of interactions. This is done through the sensors connected to the system to keep users informed of the other side (cold coffee, empty coffee pot).

The design prototype I have proposed provides the main functionality which is the coffee preparing wizard. The sharing content function is not yet implemented since I need a screen to project my content and it’s out of the scope of this project. As for the location function, it’s not yet implemented but it’s mainly about the process of choosing the location of the cafe and reserving a table.

Process

Ideation: sketching alternatives to generate ideas

Group Brainstorm

Paper prototype

Initial Idea

After going through the sketches with the design critique group in the Group Brainstorming process, I finally decided to stick with the cafe idea. However, it was an interactive tray. My design decision was based on my idea that it would be better to provide the interaction through a tray which is actually part of the coffee drinking experience rather than enforce another external element and change the norm.

After testing the prototype with different users (Arab and non-Arab) the interaction varied differently. But mostly, I noticed how frustrating it is to use the tray. It turned out that users couldn't consider the tray anything but an interactive gadget! And that’s not my intention.

So I started to observe the coffee drinking experience again with that in my mind, and I’ve noticed how people use their phones all the time even while they’re actually engaged in the drinking activity. I thought a mobile app will be the ideal solution as a first step. Users are already used to them being part of their everyday interaction. Phones are no longer a technology which is on the way. Using mobile phones creatively will actually enhance the long distance interaction. After that, I designed the mobile app prototype and then tested my design again and it was pretty acceptable by the same users who previously tested the tray. For the final prototype, I’ve used mockflow. It’s an online tool for designing wireframes and sharing them.

Interactive Witeframes

The full list of wireframes is provided in the Solution section

Through TeleCafe

I tried to explore how digital media could be incorporated to support social interaction over distance. I looked at coffee time as a platform for communication and entertainment. I treated Arabic coffee DX as medium that facilitates social interaction and proposed a solution that would preserve the cultural elements and also take advantage of the technologies already out there.

Resources:

Florian 'Floyd' Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis. 2005. Sports over a distance. Comput. Entertain.3, 3 (July 2005), 4-4. DOI=10.1145/1077246.1077261 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1077246.1077261

Lucia Terrenghi, Otmar Hilliges, and Andreas Butz. 2007. Kitchen stories: sharing recipes with the Living Cookbook. Personal Ubiquitous Comput. 11, 5 (June 2007), 409-414. DOI=10.1007/s00779-006-0079-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0079-2