We conducted a series of interviews with some McDonald's customers and an observation in the store to assess the characteristics of our target users. We then defined a set of three personas according to the information we obtained. However, we realized later in the design process that our personas do not reflect the characteristics of the target users well. We, therefore, modified our existing personas and added two more personas. The following is the revised set of personas:

Joseph Jones

Joseph is a twelve-year-old African American boy living in New York City. Joseph loves playing video games. His favourite game is StarCraft. He likes going to McDonald's because he collects the toys that come with Happy Meals. So far, the McDonald toy set he likes the most is the Star War set. His weekly allowance is $6. Joseph likes different kinds of food, but, unfortunately, he is allergic to tomatoes.

Joseph's goal is to not miss any McDonald's toy sets.

Michael Cooper

Mike is an an American highschool senior living in Santa Clara. He is attending University of California at Berkeley this fall as a computer science major. Mike is a computer guru. He owns a Pentium III 750 MHz PC and practically sleeps with it. Mike likes playing network games such as Rainbow Six. He also has his own website called "Mike's Game World". Mike is dating Amy. Amy sometimes complains that Mike spends more time on his computer than on her. Despite her complaint, Mike and Amy still get along well because they have some common interests, one of which is to enjoy McDonald's fries. Mike often goes to McDonald's with a bunch of his friends.

Regarding the use of the system, one of Mike's goals is to impress his girlfriend, Amy, with his computer skills. In addition, Mike, being a teenager, wants to look smart in front of his friends.

Ming Zhou

Ming is a twenty-five-year-old Biology graduate student in the University of Illinois, Urbana – Champaign. He is originally from China and came to the US two years ago. He gets a full scholarship plus a stipend from the university. Since he does not have a girlfriend, he spends most of his time in the lab. He only uses a computer to check his e-mail and to do some reserach on the Internet. Ming cannot cook, so he usually goes to fast-food restaurants. He goes to McDonald’s about once to twice per week during his 45-minute lunch break and sometimes when he is on his way home from the lab. His favourite item in McDonald's is Big Mac, but he also likes trying new or discounted items. Ming does not like pickles. However, since he thinks that it causes him too much trouble to mention it to the cashier, who may not understand at the first time him saying ‘pickle’ in his Chinese accent, he always throws the pickle away himself. He does not like to pay for fast-food with his credit card because he does not want to keep track of many small charges on his statement and he is too lazy to sign the slip every single time. So, he usually pay by cash unless he buys a lot.

When going to McDonald’s, his goals is to get a quick meal, preferably a Big Mac with Coke or a Mini Meal Deal, as soon as possible.

Julie Woods

Mrs. Woods is a forty-year-old housewife who usually takes her kids to McDonald's on weekends, about twice a month. She has two children: a nine-year-old Alex and a seven-year-old Kathy. Kathy is allergic to pickles. The kids love the toys that come with the Happy Meals. Mrs. Woods is originally from Massachusetts, but she and her family now live in Pinole, California. She is not exposed to using computers very much, but her kids like to play computer games at home. Julie thinks that carrying cash around is not safe for her, so she uses her credit card more often even in McDonald's since she usually has to pay for a big amount each time anyway.

In McDonald’s, Alex and Kathy always eager to get their toys, so Mrs. Woods needs to get the food for her kids first before they start fighting for the toys. Also, she has to be extra careful that there are no pickles in Kathy's food because of her allergy.

Loretta Sanchez

Loretta Sanchez is a 27-year-old Spanish McDonald's employee. She works full-time at McDonald's near her apartment. Loretta feels more comfortable speaking Spanish. She sometimes speaks in her native tougue to customers who speak Spanish. Every colleague says Loretta is very helpful and friendly. She received the Best Employee Award in 2000. Because of her friendly personality, customer often ask her to help them with the system although she does not know much about computers.

Primary Personas

We analyzed all of our personas and decided to focus our design on Ming and Mrs. Woods.

Ming is very important to the design since he seems to be the most typical type of McDonald's repeat customers. He does not want to use a credit card, the type of payment easiest for us to design with. He also seems to hesitate to communicate with the cashier because of his accent.

Mrs. Woods' tasks can be quite complex because she has to order for a party and Kathy's allergy imposes a requirement for the system. Since her kids' goals of getting the toys is similar to Joseph's, we decided to not delegate Joseph as our primany persona. Also, Mrs. Woods does not have much computer skill, so designing for her should also accommodate Mike. However, Mike has very specific and interesting goals that we do not want to overlook, so we delegate him to be a secondary persona.

Loretta, however, is an edge-case. If our interface can accommodate the above types of users, it should rarely require help from a McDonald's employee. One distinct characteristic of Loretta is, however, that she is more comfortable using her native language. Our design might be able to accommodate this requirement by providing different language options on the first page, a feature that should not require much extra overhead.

Scenarios

We designed our 3 scenarios for Ming, Mike, and Mrs. Woods respectively. We also named our scenarios so that they are easier for us to remember.

1. Quick BigMac

Ming did not have breakfast this morning, so he decides to come to McDonald's to get his lunch. He then spots this electronic ordering kiosk and decides to try the system for the first time, expecting that it will be faster than to get in the line. Since Ming is starving at this point, he wants to get his food as quick as possible. Since a Big Mac costs only $2.29, he pays his meal by cash.

(The main purpose is to test the most common type of purchase in McDonald's)

2. With a Prom Date

Mike just left the prom with his date, Amy, and a bunch of his friends. Since it is already late at night, they stop at McDonald's. Mike wants to buy some food for himself and his date. He decides to get two sets of McDouble and Coke, one for his date and one for himself. They want to share a large fries. Mike knows that Amy likes ketchup a lot. Mike wants to impress Amy by mastering this new system and does not want to look stupid in front of his friends.

(The main purpose is to test the 'Quantity' and 'Special Request' functions, and how to find particular items in the menu.)

3 Toys and Allergy

Mrs. Woods and her two kids, Alex and Kathy, come to McDonald's to buy lunch because her kids saw the Robo-Chi Pets TV commercial last night and desperately want the toys. Mrs. Woods decides to get one of the Extra Value Meals for herself and whichever items that offers toys for her kids. Since Kathy is allergic to pickles, she has to be careful in ordering her meal.

(The main purpose is to test the 'Special Requests' function, how to get the toys that come with the Happy Meals, and how to order for a big party.)