Designing innovative gesture interaction to reshape a traditional vegetarian brand.
Video - Demo
Video - Prototyping
Design Process
Brand Story
Lianhua Vegetarian Restaurant is a 19-year vegetarian brand chain of restaurant.
Attribute
Lianhua connects Chaoshan cuisine with Buddha culture, which is also a place of communication and promotion of healthy vegetarian culture.
Position
Lianhua has four chain stores, a total of 7,000㎡, with more than 300 employees.
Customers
Most of customers are comprised by locals, tourists and temple monks.
Field Trips
I have spent 3 months in Chaozhou and analyzed the local culture and vegetarian culture, as well as the local religion which is one of the reasons for Lianhua’s success.
Tasty Dishes | Sparrow Nestling
Lianhua is very successful, because it has 10 shocking unique and delicious dishes, originated by its chief. Sparrow Nestling is the most famous dish in Lianhua.
Local Culture | Chaozhou Embroidery & Wood Carving
The success of Lianhua is inextricably linked to local culture. Including Kungfu Tea, Paper cut, Lantern， embroidery, Wood Carving, Embedded porcelain and so on.
Competitive Analysis
Lianhua has achieved a good balance between religion and the new vegetarian culture, which is particularly popular among families and children. There are two types of vegetarian restaurants on the market: One for the religious culture as the background of restaurants, mostly for the elderly and religious people. The other is to emphasize the healthy, green vegetarian culture, which is more popular among young people.
Conclusion
Through Journey Map, Interviews with restaurant owners and clerks, and consumer Questionnaire, I understood the largest problem of Lianhua.
Due to the large flow of customers, Lianhua had to make many compromises in many services, which resulted in Lianhua’s lack of clear and modern standard that would prevent Lianhua from further expanding.
Therefore, in order to continue to expand in the coming years, Lianhua needs to upgrade or reshape its brand image, which is my final outcome of this project.
Kungfu Vegetarian
Concept Development
Structure & UI
Through research, the famous Chaozhou Kungfu Tea is quite similar to Lianhua Vegetarian Culture, so I integrated “Kungfu” into my concept, which is “Kungfu Vegetarian”, including Kungfu Priciple, Kungfu Source and KungFu Enjoying.
Technology
Considering the maneuverability, interaction ways, operation distance, cost and software difficulty, I finally chose Leap Motion as my final technology support. Considering customers of all ages, I designed three kinds of easy gestures. There are many religious people, so I deliberately chose the gesture of “hold one’s palms together” as a return to home page gesture.
Sketches & Pattern development
There is an old screen without any function placed in the groundfloor, except being used for sheltering the debris. I intended to enrich the functionality with it, attracting customers to the open spaces on the groundfloor. That is also an opportunity for Lianhua to enhance their brand culture.
