NFC Brand Table
Thursday, October 20, 2011 at 2:14PM Brand Table is a product designed initially for shopping center food courts that takes in an order via a mobile device in where item selection and payment will occur.
Brand Table uses NFC technology along with Java and the Android SDK to pull a menu for a restaurant upon contact with one of the specially designed Brand Stickers (to be placed on the table). This method should provide a low cost and tangible experience in where one can order a meal via mobile payments.
Some benefits include:
- Ordering on the go
- Not having to line up
- No Cash needed
Brand Table was created for ongoing research in mobile payments in conjunction with the University of Sydney,Mojo and Amnesia Razorfish. Please watch the video above for further demonstration.
Model of Phone used: Nexus-S
Special thanks to Stephan Lange, Heiko Schweickhardt and Tim Buesing for making this project possible.
To contact S_Digital about this project directly, please email info@brandtable.com.au
** This video shows the Table without a skin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkN_vyhhLDI
Reader Comments (10)
It looks good on video, but how do you implement it in the real world? As far as my understanding goes, putting a standard read/write Mifare chip inside the coasters may be able to push a menu onto the device & receive an order in return. But how do the orders get processed with a restaurant which is more than 20 cms away from the chip?
Hey Rohit,
The NFC simply sends a URL to the phone in where content is loaded over a wireless network. This way the order can be received further away from the chip. Think of NFC in this case as just a convenient way of accessing menu content already online.
So you tap the chip to load a URL instead of typing it in. & the payment gets processed online through stored credit card info or does the NFC help?
Hey Rohit,
Payment is done via a pre configured debt/credit card in this example.
Your Brandtable concept is an extension of a Toronto food court that I once visited. There is a centralised order taker/cashier with a system that is networked to all the vendors in the food court. Patrons all place orders with the same clerk(s), pay at one spot and only once for what may be dishes from various vendors. The vendors receive the orders via the networked system and will call out your number when ready. Very efficient and the patron only makes one stop to pay for foods that may come from various menus, while the food vendors focus on food preparation rather than order taking or cashiering. Of course restaurants already handle transactions the same way, except this is applied to multiple vendors networked with one cashier station.
Hi F.L Feimo,
Exactly right! During the research examples as you have mentioned did show. This concept expands upon those systems through scalability. Providing a cheap alternative in where most of the costs are absorbed by existing infrastructure was a key component of this project.
Hi, does this require an app to be installed on the Nexus S phone before you can use the system?
cheers
DK
Hello Feimo,
Do you know name and location of the food court in Toronto that has a centralised order taker/cashier with a system?
Hi,
Brilliant use of NFC. How thin do you think the coasters could be ? Do you think it may be aesthetically better to use a thin sticker and would this be possible ?
I can definately see this catching on, there is nothing worse than having to queue up for food.