Fast Accurate Order Entry

A Study of Order Entry and Human Computer Interaction
and Its Effect on Customer Satisfaction

When development work began on our Patent Pending order entry process in February of 2002, the objective was fast and accurate orders. An additional unexpected benefit was the ease of learning to use the order entry system.

It also lead to a flexible order system where an order can be entered by touch screen, mouse, or numeric key pad. The numeric key pad has long been the preferred method of fast and accurate data entry for the Data Processing industry.

The research prior to that time began as we observed the wait staff at numerous restaurants enter orders on touch screen monitors at both independent and chain stores.

The most interesting observation was the inverse correlation between the amount of time it took for an order to be entered and the number of patrons visiting the restaurant. We also noticed the more menu buttons or choices on the screen, the longer it took for a menu choice to be made. We then did a research study into a persons ability to learn and process order information as related to "Human Computer Interaction" or HCI. NOTE: The correlation between the slow order process and fewer customers may also be due to poor staff training.

  • Why do we limit the menu choices in our software?
  • Why do books have chapters?
  • Why do chapters have paragraphs?
  • Why do paragraphs have sentences?
  • Why are phone numbers 7 digits?
The answer is: the human mind accepts and retains information more easily when it is broken into chunks.

Random, uncategorized, or large chunks of information are not easily accepted and the mind can become overwhelmed. When the mind feels overwhelmed it shuts down, rejects the information not allowing it to enter long-term memory. This includes people entering your customers orders.

The benefits of fewer menu choices are faster and accurate orders. Both, in fact, are proven major factors in customer satisfaction. See also our Customer Satisfaction Study.

Basically, the mind can't bear information presented in an unrelated or random way and favors small categorized groupings. The mind prefers chunks as proven in the widely accepted "Chunk Theory".

The Magic Number Seven
There's quite a lot of evidence to back up the principles behind chunk theory; possibly the most famous is a piece of research for the Bell Telephone Company (and the reason phone numbers are 7 digits). The research was titled;

"The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information."

  • George A. Miller, Harvard University. First published in The Psychological Review.


    • The research showed that the mind needs to use, "a process of organizing or grouping the input into familiar units or chunks." It was found that the maximum number of things the human mind could comfortably remember or work with was limited to 5-9 things. With the mid point being the magic number 7.

    So Easy Even with No Training
    In a follow up study we selected people with little computer experience, various educational, intellectual, socio economic, and cultural backgrounds to test our order entry system. The results were, that given any of the above stated backgrounds, every person was able to enter an order with no training what so ever. All orders were completed accurately and in timely fashion.

    References
    A special thanks to Nichol Kitos M.A. Boston University School of Psychology for guiding our research in the proper direction.

    Mark Antonius Neerincx, Harmonizing Tasks to Human Knowledge and Capacities. Dissertation, Groningen, 1995

    Atkinson, R., Shiffrin, R., Human Memory: A Proposed System and Its Control Processes, 1968

    Baddeley A., Recent Developments in Working Memory, Curr Opin Neurobiol. 1998 Apr;8(2):234-8. Review

    Ehrhart, L.S., New Approaches to Human Computer Interaction Research and Design for Decision Aiding Systems, 5th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control, Proceedings, 1990

    Blackwell, A.F., Metacognitive Theories of Visual Programming: What do we think we are doing?, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, 1996. Proceedings

    Barnard, P.J., Connecting Psychological Theory to HCI: Science, Craft or Just Plain Craftiness?, IEEE Colloquium on Theory in Human Computer Interaction, 1991