QueueFlow

before and after comparison
imagined innovation
tradtional coffee shops that are crowded
the system for the baristas
the system that confirm the code scanned
the code

Inspiration

In nowadays’ in campus coffee shop, the pick up area is always in mess even with the available of online reservation of coffee, students clustering around the front desk searching for their names, which not only significantly hinders the face-to-face customer service, but also causes miss-taking of coffee. This "pickup bottleneck" has increased waiting times during peak hours by more than 30%. This is so time consuming that makes me to think of a method to make it more efficient.

What it does

-For students: The system reduces pickup time from an average of 3–5 minutes to under 10 seconds, which reduces waiting hassle -For baristas: Cut down by 50% the number of inquiries to identify whose the drink belong to allowing them to focus on crafting drinks and increasing output throughput during peak hours.
-For shop owners: Achieve significant improvements in customer satisfaction and increase purchase rates with low cost of renovation.

How we built it

1.By making an online ordering app, students will get a live code and the order number for their coffee. 2.When the coffee is done, the condition on the app will change from “preparing” to “finished” 3.When the drink is completed, the front desk’s screen will show the order number. Once the students arrive, they could show their live code and, as the system affirms, go to the specific block to take away their drinks without having any conversation with the staffs.

Challenges we ran into

during peak hours, there will have so many orders that might change their state at the same time, every time the baristas click the " ready button, there will have a several second delay
Initially we use static QR codes, which could be screenshoot to send to others to take the drnks, causing lossing of people's drinks. We might rather use active codes to solve this problem. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our rotating secure live codes have greatly reduce the rate at which the drinks are being taken wrong.
The entire system don't really need high cost or any other more equipments for the shop owner and the consumers. However, our changes could reduce the wasted time much higher than the cost put into the coffee shop. ## What we learned
Although the innovation isn't a big change to the shop, what really matters is the experience of consumer and the baristas.
I also learn that creating this method shouldn't start from the problem itself, rather, I should focus on the limitation of this circumstance. Observing the constraints that current system has to improve them more accurately and efficiently. ## What's next for QueueFlow Short term: utilize this sytem in several schools. After implementing this plan, we could gather information about what is good and what still need to be improved.

Long term: Finallize the plan to use it in other circumstances, not limited to coffee.

Github link: https://github.com/tonyallaaa/queueflow/blob/main/README.md