Ethnography for Designers by Galen Cranz

Author:Galen Cranz [Cranz, Galen]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781317309512
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2016-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Existing space

This restaurant, located in North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto, specializes in gourmet food made exclusively from organic and locally grown products. Both their lunch and dinner menus change monthly to ensure that all recipes include only the freshest ingredients. Due to the size of the restaurant—no more than 250 square feet—and its location less than a half block from a busy street, the restaurant attracts takeout orders almost exclusively. Customers range from college students to families—all in search of the same thing: the unique experience of eating gourmet entrees from small octagonal cardboard boxes with plastic cutlery. The restaurant manages to provide exceptional food with a laidback attitude; the limited seating and space work to create an atmosphere of leisure and community as numerous parties will often sit at the same table or on the same bench to wait for their food. This space also allows for chance encounters. For example, on my first visit, a couple was sitting at one of the outside tables drinking a bottle of wine from plastic cups when one of their friends came running by on an evening jog; he stopped to chat with them for a while, enjoyed a potato puff, and then continued on. It is this space of unpredictability that initially attracted me to the site; I was also intrigued by the thriving business that had taken root in this small shack on the sidewalk.

Despite its simplistic design, the elegance of the restaurant places it among some of Berkeley’s top restaurants. Due to its relatively higher prices and its distance from campus it has not become a regular eating spot for the college population; instead, it attracts a steady flow of customers from throughout the city and surrounding area, who wander in and out enjoying all North Berkeley has to offer. A small kitchen built into the bottom of a house, the restaurant forgoes expansive space for gourmet excellence. The space is highly efficient and the employees are friendly and welcoming, while also highly capable. They provide quality products to happy customers who understand that occasionally sacrifices must be made in order to achieve real value.

Unfortunately, in the case of this restaurant, that sacrifice is made in its building, where minimal space is accepted to allow for high-quality, organic food. The exterior is relatively plain, decorated only by a large sign announcing the restaurant. The interior has no ornamentation, only three bar stools and limited counter space. As illustrated in Figure 1, there is a clear delineation between customer and employee spaces that allows for, but doesn’t enhance interaction between the two; additionally, there are also clearly assigned spaces for each subcategory of employee. A small cubby next to the door holds monthly menus and a fridge next to the front counter displays beverage options; the space is nominal and provides very limited information about the restaurant, its business model, or the ideals upon which it was founded. A customer walking by is left to discern what the space entails, usually taking most of their cues from the cardboard to-go boxes stacked on the front tables.

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