Automated ordering – Build a burger in Storyline 2

For the record, I’m not a huge fan of fast food. But, I have young kids. Ipso facto, we occasionally find ourselves in that place that our kids call ‘the hamburger place’. The kids like the McFood, but they LOVE the new automated ordering systems.

Fast, cheap inspiration

In Australia, the hamburger place has introduced numerous big, colourful touch-screens near the entryway of each store. These screens are actually kiosks. They let you tap-in your order, pay with plastic and then pick-up your tray when your number is called.

My kids love the idea of using these kiosks. I quickly became a fan of the functionality. In my experience, they worked PERFECTLY—and that is not something I say lightly.

As soon as I used it, my first thought was: I wonder if I can build something like this in Storyline?

The answer, of course, is yes.

Click Play below to check out the live demo. Then, read on to find out how it was put together.

Automated ordering – design your dinner

I’m not currently interested in slinging burgers, and I’m not about to go into the cryptographic protocols required to create a secure payment system. What I’m really interested in is the process of letting a user customise their order using a completely automated ordering system.

So, I planned a basic system that would include an intro screen, followed by six steps of creating your meal:

1. Pick a meat for your burger
2. Choose a cheese
3. Select a sauce
4. Add other fillings
5. Would you like fries with that?
6. How will you wash it down?

On any of these screens, it’s important that the user can reset their selections or skip any item they don’t want.

Throughout the process, the system totes up the cost of the items. This prepares the order for the checkout. But before that, we’ll show the order so the user can confirm or change their picks.

Once confirmed, that’s when they’ll go to the checkout.

How is it done?

It runs smoothly. It seems so simple. It must be pretty straightforward…

Even this simplistic version requires around 45 variables to work—and many, many state changes. The ‘Confirm your order’ slide alone has 48 triggers.

If you’d like to try your hand at building something similar, I’ve recorded two videos on how to set it up and how to make it work. They a bit longer than most of the guide videos that I post, but everything progresses in a sensible logical fashion. They’ll have you picking out the pickle in no time.

Part 1

This one shows the general set up of the interaction.

Part 2

This one shows how to use triggers, state changes and variables to make it all work.

Hack the example

If you’d like to have a look—and maybe a tinker—under the hood, download the source file. Click the button below and open it up with Storyline2.

Anything else?

Interested in other ways the hospitality industry can use Storyline2? The e-learning heroes set their online community the challenge of creating an e-learning interaction for the food and beverage industry. Most of the entries are correctly aimed at training food and beverage workers. My automated ordering example didn’t exactly fit that brief, but it was fun to build all the same.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.