Nutrition in the Drive-Thru

Ordering in the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant causes people to make rushed decisions. This results in people either ordering the same thing every single time (and wishing for more), or picking an unhealthy meal all together.

We realized that people could take the pressure off ordering if we decoupled the ordering experience from the drive-thru. We created a system that allows people to explore a menu at home, where they are able to take the time to make a meal according to their preferences. After they have confirmed their meal, they are able to retrieve the meal with an RFID card at the drive-thru.

User Research

Our users were adults who concurrently go to school and work, since this is a population that would likely use a drive-thru to save time while commuting between the two locations. We found that 43% of our users wanted to plan their meal ahead of time, while the same amount of users don't want to be troubled with counting calories.

Brainstorming

Our brainstorming sessions covered everything from mobile apps to the ability for the drive-thru lane to identify a car and dynamically change the menu for that user.

User Feedback

After presenting several of our ideas to our target population, we found that there was a lot of interest in offering the ability to swipe an RFID card that automatically switched the menu to a healthy menu. This was great for the people who didn't want to spend time counting calories, but still wanted to eat healthier.

We also found many people who were interested in exploring the menu on their laptops to make a custom meal. Since our users were taking the time to create an order ahead of time, we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to enable their order to be retrieved in the drive-thru via an RFID card.

Prototyping