Your friendly fusion neighborhood restaurant

1. Your friendly fusion neighborhood restaurant Andy Tse Jenny Huang Samson Toor Zishan Budawani by COGS 187B Spring 2012 A Project from UCSD

2. introduction • About Café 21 • Café 21 is a premier restaurant in Downtown San Diego. It features: • Fine dining with Azerbaijan and Armenian Fusion cuisine. • Excellent interior décor with a ambient feeling • Offers excellent and interesting customer service. • Amazing a wide variety of wine and organics ingredients feature in its food. • Fusion between a full-size bar and restaurant. • Mildly on the expensive side for a meal. Lowest dish is $12.00 which is a small-portion flatbread sandwich.

3. CURRENT COMPETITORS OF CAFÉ 21 • CAFÉ 21 faces many types of competitors in its municipal and regional market. Driven by consumer demand and market supply, CAFÉ 21 holds a decent competition amongst its competitors; however, larger chain restaurants such as that of Olive Garden, Olive Garden and Red Lobster outweighs the competition for Café 21. Supply and Demand Curve for Café 21 Supply Price D2 D1 San Diego Downtown Gaslamp District Quantity • Key Competitors of CAFÉ 21: • Larger chain restaurants (e.g. Chipotle) • Sevilla Restaurant • J-Six Restaurant • Other similar restaurants in San Diego’s Downtown Gaslamp District

4. Client needs • Client wants to be able to market website efficiently • Wants to have aesthetically pleasing site • Client wants to give off a Middle Eastern type of feeling to the website • The site should combine elements of the restaurant in the design • Wants to be able to cater to a more young and professional audience • Client wants to make sure people to understand the standards of the restaurant • Client wants to give the restaurant also a family type of feeling • Simple efficient design with a very original taste to overall aesthetics.

5. USER NEEDS • Want efficient and quick loading web pages • Interactive menu with prices and pictures • Links and buttons that are obvious for users to identify • Fast access links (quick links to frequent visited functions.) • Nice aesthetics including images Look n’ Feel • Contact Information and Location

6. COMPETITIVE ANAYSLIS Competitive Analysis Websites: J-6 Restaurant, Chipotle and Sevilla Top Navigation: Navigation Level

7. CAFÉ 21 – current website • Possess a decent aesthetically looking site but lower-level pages contains limitations such as coding errors and design flaws.

8. J-six restaurant SAN DIEGO • Clean, fun and informative. • User-friendly with reservation on home page, menu clickable on first sight and offers quick selection of important elements for users

9. J-six restaurant SAN DIEGO • Sub-navigation is offered. However, lower level pages lack bread crumbs. Uses sidebar too.

10. SEVILLA – SAN DIEGO • Simple, clean design • Navigation is circular and subtle light up effect • No distracting flash animations • Image based, looks fresh

11. CHIPOTLE – MEXICAN GRILL • Clean, simple and refreshing feel to overall site architecture. • Users know the brand and the product Chipotle is trying to sell • Consistency is well-preserved throughout the entire site.

12. Functionality Functionality is important to users because it is just what makes the site work. Positive Aspects of Functionality Elements The majority of restaurant websites offer users basic information about its products and services such as Contact and Menu on the primary navigation page. Efficiency is a primary problem that many web designers need to address to a user’s experience. Pop-out menus offer one solution to this problem for quick access.

13. Functionality Functionality is important to users because it is just what makes the site work. Negative Aspects of Functionality Elements J-Six has miscategorized certain items in its top navigation bar. It does entirely follow Gestalt's Principles of Similarity. This problem may be also noticeable on other sites too.

14. NAVIGATION Well-designed navigation allows users to efficiently move to across different types of information quickly and efficiently. Positive Aspects of Functionality Elements All websites offer some level of consistent top navigation menus to users. Users are also prompted the location of their whereabouts on the site through highlighted arrows for that particular category

15. NAVIGATION Well-designed navigation allows users to efficiently move to across different types of information quickly and efficiently. Negative Aspects of Functionality Elements WHERE ARE BREAD-CRUMBS NAVIGATION ??? Most these sites have an absence of breadcrumbs for lower level pages. Image galleries do not offer users the option to go back to the previous picture and move onto the next pictures. Users especially on the Sevilla website would have to manually click on pictures one by one.

16. Site architecture Site architecture is important when organizing and grouping categories of information based on Gestalt's principles of like information. Positive Aspects of Site Architecture Elements Many of the acceptable design websites in our competitive analysis contain its navigation menu on the top of the site. Side menus are often incorporated for further secondary and tertiary level pages for information Content is always in the middle.

17. Summary of likes and dislikes of compared websites Likes dislikes Flash sites are error prone and require specific plugins that all users may not have Mild inconsistent use of white space ¾ of the restaurant branding is mildly bad that it could use some improvement in order to better convey its services, products, and company core values. • Most of the compared websites are clean and non-cluttered • Overall user interactivity is acceptable. Users have full control of functionality when navigating between primary and secondary level web pages. • Sites are refreshing and aesthetically pleasing. Utilizes cognitive approaches when considering graphical representations of space such as straight lines and curved lines.

18. OUR THOUGHTS FOR THE NEXT STEPS OF CAFÉ 21 ---- Good Ideas Part 1 • Improve and increase overall User Functionality and Interactivity • Improve Overall Site Architecture and Aesthetics • Expand the Length of Content and Information from its original length • Repositioning of Key Elements in an organized manner

19. GOOD IDEAS – Part 2 • Chipotle has a very concise and simple amount of content, definitely a positive • Café 21 website currently has a decent reservation page, although it would be better to have it linked directly to the homepage. • Sevilla has the most simple navigation and a very pristine and clean look • Chipotle has the best functionality in terms of speed, but the flash is not a great addition. • JSix has the best graphics by far and it would be awesome to continue moving pictures on a more appropriate carousel. • Café 21 has the best color combinations, but it doesn’t help that is the rest we are supposed to be modeling.

20. conclusion • User functionality and interactivity is important when designing a website. Rather than allowing a website guide users, users should guide themselves since users are more comfortable when they have their own sense of control on where to click. • Café 21 is faced with many competitors in its market. However, it faces even greater competition because of current prices for its products and services it offers to their customers. A decent meal seems to be mildly expensive than average on a municipal and regional level. • Users like special and unique features on a website. When designing web sites for restaurants, users like to know a preliminary idea of what products they are purchasing through a gallery of images and other types of multimedia. • Based on narrowed categories of comparison websites, Café 21 can improve its image, reputation and marketability through a website by catering more to the users needs than the need of the owners.