Niki Marathia
Previous
UX of slowness
Week 2 of 2
Team
Slowness is not just delay, it is difference. It can be a strategy, a symptom, a burden, or a gift. Slowness challenges the myths of efficiency, productivity and constant progress. It makes space for process, reflection, friction and care. Design an encounter that values patience, presence, or pause.

Research methods:
Behavioural mapping, speed dating
Amita Tulpule
Ayesha Saleem
Eryue Wan
Evander Wang
Niki Marathia
Vanashree Chowdhury
Yifei Huang

To help us explore the questions that came up after our behavioural mapping, we wanted to visit places where people could not engage in slow and mindful tasks as easily. We thought that the hospitality sector was perfect for this purpose. We prepared a worksheet (Figure 1) to help people describe how they are feeling and set out to speak to staff in cafés.

Figure 1. Worksheet of emotional states: fast, blocked, overloaded, slow and present, fading energy, calm and steady.


We spoke to Janey, a barista at Hana Coffee (Figure 2a). We then spoke to Giada, a barista at Little Louie (Figure 2b). Finally, we spoke to Raheel, a pastry chef at Gail’s (Figure 2c). They each recorded their emotional state on our worksheet, with the exception of Raheel who had his hands full, so we took notes on the worksheet ourselves (Figures 3a-c).

Figure 2a. Hanna Coffee. Taken by Yifei Huang.
Figure 2b. Little Louie. Taken by Yifei Huang.
Figure 2c. Gail’s. Taken by Yifei Huang.
Figure 3a. Notes at Hanna Coffee. Taken by Yifei Huang.
Figure 3b. Notes at Little Louie. Taken by Yifei Huang.
Figure 3c. Notes at Gail’s. Taken by Yifei Huang.

Below are our notes from the day, including transcripts of our conversations. Most notably, Janey decided to work part-time hours in a slower-paced café after 10 years in hospitality took a toll on her health. Raheel’s favourite part of the day is his 30-minute break, where he gets to sit and enjoy a meal. These accounts aligned with our personal experiences of working in hospitality.


Person detailsTranscript

Interviewee: Janey
British Background
Part time job, 10 years work experience
5-7 hours per day
Previously worked at a hotel in MaryleboneInterviewee’s experience:
A great lifestyle shift from stressful to slowness
discover what is more important in life

Previously worked in very stressfull hospitality industy, made a lot of money but not really living, Low blood pressure problem started to arise


Interviewee: Giada
Part time job, 5 days a week - 6-7 hours
Transitioning from student to work
ADHD
A person who always feels like ‘i need to do something’ Interviewee’s experience:
Slowness is a buffer before confronting fast-paced life, time reserved for oneself.

W: When you felt slowness in your life pace?
G: Morning tea time. Wake up 15mins earlier, just to enjoy the quiet tea time before the work in my garden.

W: What gets in the way of slowing you down?
G: The constant internal and external pressures to perform better/to earn money/procrastination.

Interviewee: Raheel
Indian Background
Full time Job, 2 years here at Gails
5 days a week - 8 hours per day
A: How does your pace feel today?
R: Fast.

A: How would you want it to be?
R: I want to be calm and steady because my job is really fast paced, the same tasks everyday.

A: What gets in the way of making you feel calm and steady?
R: Managing the time is so hard, if i had more time i might have relaxed more.

A: What do you enjoy the most in your job?
R: I enjoy the break the most. I have a break for 30 minutes everyday - I eat my food, scroll and watch something on my phone.

Insight
The customers’ ability to enjoy a sense of slowness or “the right to slow down” in the café is fundamentally supported by the continuous, high-speed labor of back-of-house and front-of-house employees.
This means a small number of workers carry a constant, fast-paced labor rhythm to keep the entire café functioning.


We mindmapped our insights to find connections between what we learned in the cafés and the puppet-making workshop (Figure 4a). On one hand, we wanted to comment on the conditions that hospitality workers work under, and on the other, we wanted to keep some of the elements of mindfulness we observed in the workshop.

Figure 4a. A mindmap of our insights from the puppet-making workshop, Hana Coffee, Little Louie, and Gail’s.
Figure 4b. Discussing how we could turn these into a concept idea. Taken by Amita Tulpule.
Our first idea involved visualising our role as cogs in the system of capitalism. We laser-cut the below from an acrylic sheet and arranged them so that when one is turned, all move. We projected the video in Figure 5b on a wall, which looked beautiful, however, we could not think of how to develop it further into an experience.

Figure 5a. Testing the if the cogs turn.
Figure 5b. Filming the cogs of capitalism.
We decided to experiment with an experience where we are waiters that feed a customer. Drawing from our speed dating conversations and our observations from our behavioural mapping, we felt that a dining experience could include the insights we gained in both. We first tried this between us, with Vana feeding Yifei.

Figure 6. Vana as the waiter feeding Yifei the customer behind a sheet of paper.


We felt that doing this behind a sheet of paper did not hide the waiter as we thought it may, but was a little awkward instead. We tried enacting the experience again with someone outside our team, this time with Vana serving the customer instead of feeding them.

Figure 7. Vana as the waiter serving Waleed as the customer.


We also tried creating an exaggerated premium experience for the customer.

Figure 8. Evander as the waiter looking after Waleed as the customer.


This direction felt like it was working, so we tried creating a contrast between front-of-house and back-of-house using a white sheet and tube lights.

Figure 9a. Testing tube lights. Taken by Amita Tulpule.
Figure 9b. Testing lights on the dining table. Taken by Ayesha Saleem.
We set up our dining room and wrote a script for our experience. We decided our roles would be:
Host:
Waitress:
Chef 1:
Chef 2:
Front light:
Back light:
Music:
Evander
Vanashree
Yifei
Wan
Ayesha
Niki
Amita
Figure 10. Practicing our roles with our script, dining table, and lights set up.


We practiced our roles between ourselves, and then with Yuki as the customer. This round was really useful because Yuki told us she felt awkward sitting there the whole time. She also told us that she would feel even less comfortable doing so in front of the whole class.

Figure 11. Practicing our roles with Yuki as the customer.


Yuki’s feedback helped us adjust our interactions with the customer. We left smaller gaps between them placing an order and us preparing it, so they would not have to face the audience for extended periods. We tested this with Luis and his feedback about the experience was positive.

Figure 12. Practicing our roles with Luis as the customer.


This was an iterative process, in which we made changes to our roles and the script after every practice. The role of the chefs was developed from our first round (Figure 6), where we were meant to feed the customer ourselves. This eventually grew to two chefs having an argument, with one of them walking out of set to have a cigarette. The cogs of capitalism (Figures 5a-b) can only keep turning if all of them do their part, which is why we wanted to disrupt the system by having one chef take a break. Our final performance:
Figure 13. Our final experience on presentation day.
...unfortunately the dessert never made it to the table.
Figure 14a. Our host introducing the experience.¹
Figure 14b. Our dining room.² 
Figure 14c. Our waitress taking an order.³
Figure 14d. Our customer receiving his drink.
Figure 14e. Our waitress serving the main course.
Figure 14f. An argument breaks up back-of-house.
Figure 14g. Chef 1 goes for a cigarette break.
Figure 14h. Chef 2 drags them back into the kitchen.

Room for growthOur performance went smoothly on presentation day and was overall well received. During our tutorial, however, we realised that although we set out to do interviews for speed dating, we never did the storyboard part of the research method. The interviews helped us understand some of the conditions that hospitality staff work under, but without doing storyboards, we never received feedback on how accurate our experience was.

Missing the second leg of speed dating made me reflect on how our experience could exist in the world and have an impact. Personally, I was able to relate to it because I worked in restaurants, cafés, and events whilst doing my bachelor’s. I would love to see more inputs from people who have had careers in hospitality and could use an outlet as a form of self expression. If this became a workshop, participants could iterate the play (like we did throughout our process) based on their experiences. Rather than a one-off performance, it could be a workshop that creates a community. Through improv, comedy, and props this could be about sharing laughs and connecting with people who have found themselves working in the demanding hospitality sector.

Notes¹, ² and ³ To clean up the background and freshen up the white sheet in Figures 14a-c, I used Photoshop’s AI Generative Fill tool. The subjects were not edited or altered.