Cafe Coffee Day’s Interactive Touchscreen Tables; Too much engagement?

There’s a hotel in Bangalore which has equipped its staff with iPhones and they take orders with them. A New York hotel has replaced the room service with iPads. Now Cafe Coffee Day wants to replace coffee tables with interactive touchscreens and hopes to increase user engagement and probably sell little extra coffee on the way.

What’n Interesting Tablet

WINT as the technology is called, short for What’n Interesting tablet, this tablet table is aimed at India’s rich and vibrant youth. Here’s the technology :

If two people are sitting around and having a conversation, think about this device as the third person.

Just one question : Why would two people having a conversation want a third person to converse with?

The concept is interesting. People can gather at one place and have a go at the tablet table. They can play, they can laugh. I hope they can order from these tablets too. The timing also seems to be right for introducing such a thing. India’s youth, or the Coffee Day visiting crowd at least, is already familiar with the touch screen concept.

But would it sell more coffee?

More than the youth it would be the kids which the concepts really appeals too. Kids get bored very easily and use whatever available at their disposal to play. An interactive tablet as a table would just be the thing kids would love to have. But then Coffee Day isn’t much of a place for kids.

Here’s a thought : What if the youth engages too much? What if they order just one coffee and were playing with the tablet all day? Wouldn’t that be a potential miss on customers who come in and find that there are no seats available? Is there something called too much engagement?

Via Pluggd.in