Two weeks ago, I got really bored of the food in the D2 dining hall and knew it was time to finally explore new horizons, so I made my way to D1. But unlike D2, where you just pick your food and pay at the end, the system in D1 was totally different and a lot more complicated. First, you walk through the different food sections looking at the menus and decide what you want to order. Then you go to the payment place at the end, where you place your order, pay, get a pager, and receive your receipt. But it turns out that is not the end. You also have to bring that receipt back to the food station that cooks your meal and hand it over, and only then do they start cooking. I had no idea about any of this, and nothing in the place made it obvious, so I was sitting there with my pager waiting for my bao buns that nobody had started making. Later, I found out that many of my friends went through a similar experience during their first time at D1.
The problem is that there were no signifiers to guide me through the ordering process. Adding some arrows or signs that show where to go would be a good start. For the payment and receipt part, there are two possible solutions. The first is easier to implement, while the second would make things more convenient. My first solution is to add a sign at the cashier that tells customers to hand their receipt over to the food station. The second solution is to automate the process by having the cashier send the order directly to the kitchen. Of course, I have no clue how the system works behind the scenes in dining halls, so these are just my simple suggestions.
Also, looking back at my sketches in p5.js, I realize that I barely give any signifiers in them. In my Beatles vinyl record sketch, I don’t think I gave a strong signifier that the disc is spinning, since the hoops are all symmetric and because of this the rotation is barely visible. The viewer cannot even tell that the whole disc is spinning. Even a simple visible indicator, like a small dot placed near the edge of the disc, could work as a signifier. Since the viewer could watch that dot move around the center and understand that the whole record is rotating. The same problem is in my fireflies sketch, where nothing tells the viewer that they can interact with the fireflies by moving the mouse over the canvas. Someone opening the sketch might just watch the fireflies float around and never discover that they react to the mouse cursor.