High Tempo Work: Design Challenges for Head-worn Displays in Quick Service Restaurants

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Quick service restaurants (QSRs) are high tempo work environments that require collaboration and communication between crew. In a number of respects, head-worn displays (HWDs) might seem a promising technology to support QSR crew, but on close inspection they raise challenging issues for design. We conducted fieldwork studies at two large QSRs to understand how work is organised, how existing systems are used, and how information is displayed to and communicated between crew. We observed the crew working both routinely and with improvisation, collaboratively and individually, physically and digitally. From our analysis of the field study, we identify tentative use cases for HWDs, but with these also design tensions—that is, opportunities coupled with challenges that appear difficult to circumvent even with modest design proposals. These tensions would require careful consideration if HWDs were to be deployed in in QSRs, given that HWDs are ubiquitous, potentially private, digital, mobile, and able to collect behavioural data.