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The Humber Room


Service Design



SUMMARY


The issue -> Getting our school restaurant more activity in the bar area for hospitality students.

The approach -> Through ethnographic research and service design interventions.

BACKGROUND


The Humber Room is Humber College’s campus restaurant, designed as a learning space for students involved in event management, hospitality and culinary arts. It acts as a simulation lab for students in these fields to gain practical experience in restaurant and event operations.



THE SITE VISIT


Starting off this journey was the opportunity for us to visit the service space.  We met with the Associate Dean of the restaurant’s cluster of programs, who gave us some of his time to talk about what the Humber Room is all about as well as giving us a tour of the usable space. 

Outside of this visit, members of our group took part in a lunch visit at the restaurant to experience the service from a customer standpoint. These visits allowed us to identify aspects of the service that can potentially be changed or improved:

︎︎︎ Booking & Reservation systems
︎︎︎ Customer Feedback
︎︎︎ Drinks & Bar (my area of focus)
︎︎︎ Menus
︎︎︎ Student Experience



Stakeholder Map

UNDERSTANDING THE SERVICE


A stakeholder map was created to plot out the occupation of roles in the service ecosystem. Since this space is unique, and not just a regular restaurant, we included the internal structure that involves providing a curriculum to students that use this space to learn their trade. This helps us understand how operations behind the scenes lead to providing the customer the service experience they are looking for.




PERSONAS



JOURNEY MAPS







CO-CREATION WORKSHOP


Shifting focus towards the drinks & bar related aspects of the service, I ran a co-creation workshop with some of my colleagues where we explored ideas surrounding the bar’s role in the service ecosystem.


PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION


Following the workshop, I compiled the results into solutions that will help in increasing what the bar has to offer to front of house students and restaurant guests. Since this restaurant is unique due to student-run service, there is potential for drink offerings to make a memorable impact on visiting guests. In creating a stronger bond between the activity at the bar and guests, other drink-related offerings of the restaurant are also put on display in various ways. 





SERVICE BLUEPRINT (INCLUDING SOLUTIONS)






TAKEAWAYS


This was an amazing opportunity for us to dive into the world of service design. Not only did it give us the chance to create interventions to solve a problem, it allowed us to explore a service space and discover what can be done differently or better. I feel that I grew a lot as a designer and a problem solver during the course of this project, as I had to shift the way I approached problem solving to a wider perspective. Studying every active member, tool and space within a fast-paced service was an eye-opening experience.