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the user experience of the Westin's room service menu

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I'm currently in Atlanta, wrapping up some Entourage research. My flight from SFO was late on Wednesday. Instead of having a Waffle House homecoming [1], and since the Westin Atlanta Perimeter North isn't really close to anything that was open when I got in at 10pm, I went the room service route.

I entered my room, dropped my luggage, and flipped open the folder in the room. In the menu section, there was a single sheet of paper telling me that the menu is now available on channel 41 on my television. I was instantly annoyed at having to turn on the television.

The experience got worse. They couldn't put the complete menu on a single page. When I turned on the television, it was showing part of the wine list. The on-screen menu could show no more than five or six items at a time. I had to wait more than 10 minutes for the menu to scroll through the wine list, then the beer list, then the late night (after midnight) menu, then the kid's menu, then the breakfast menu. I had enough time while waiting for the right screen to show up to completely unpack and start ironing out the travel wrinkles in my packed clothes. When the menu finally got to what I might care about, each group of items (appetizers, salads, sandwiches, main dishes) on its own screen, I found myself grabbing a pen and paper so that I could jot down things I might want.

I had to wait for the menu to get to the right place, waiting while screens of things that I wasn't interested in or that weren't available at that time of day went past. I had to make a decision based on what was visible on the screen to me, or the notes that I had made, instead of being able to view the whole menu at once. The text on the screen was in an italic font with lots of swirly serifs, which was very hard to read. Whoever typed it in didn't proofread or spellcheck it -- the menu was was full of typos.

What a bad user experience! Ordering off a menu might take some people ten minutes, but they're not stuck staring at the breakfast menu when it's 6pm.  They can flip back and forth between the sandwiches and the pastas. This television menu requires you to make a quick decision, but it still takes a long time if you catch the menu at the wrong place. The user has no control over the menu.

An electronic menu isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it needs a different implementation. The font must be optimised for readability on a television screen; you can't use the same font that you do on your print menu. I need to be able to have some kind of control over what is shown, so that I'm not forced to look at items that I'm never going to order (sorry, I don't like beer) and so I can go back to the sandwiches if I decide that none of the salads look nice. There are ways to make an electronic menu work, but the current method isn't it.

[1] I never thought I'd be able to work that song title into a blog post!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 10, 2007
    Wow, you <em>iron</em>? :)