Lego Mini Chef: Order your food with LEGO bricks

DREAM ASSIGNMENT

Order your food with LEGO bricks – and have it delivered by dancing robots. Thanks to a highly creative collaboration between the LEGO Group and HiQ, the family’s meal at LEGO House in Billund, Denmark, really is something out of the ordinary.

DESIGN PROCESS

The restaurant strategy for LEGO House included a high level concept for a family restaurant with app ordering and robots. Over a six month pre study, a series of workshops, prototype user tests and role play sessions were conducted in parallel with story development and technical research to detail all scenarios of the guest journey. Content production covers an entrance screen film, staff script, menu card, robot animation and dynamic app animation cut scenes – all of which in tight collaboration with the customer and tested on users throughout. The web based staff UI was built with a minimum feature set which was then evolved along with staff onboarding and trimming-in of operations.

DIGIPHYSICAL EXPERIENCE

LEGO House is the latest addition to the Billund skyline in Denmark, a gigantic LEGO building filled with 25 million LEGO bricks and creative, educational fun and games for LEGO fans of all ages. But to unleash your greatest talents for building and playing, you need fuel in the form of food in your tummy. And now the entire food experience – conceived and constructed by HiQ – reflects the true LEGO spirit.

EDUCATIONAL PLAY

Every component of the meal is represented by a specific LEGO brick, and when the full meal order has been composed, diners slide their tray into a hatch that leads directly into the world of LEGO. Then you can follow on screen as LEGO figures interpret the children’s order, prepare the food and place it in a meal box. Meal boxes are then transported on a conveyor belt from the kitchen to two LEGO robots who hand out the orders to the waiting guests.

It’s fun and it’s an exciting process for children to watch – but the project is, of course, about more than simply ordering food. The LEGO group sought HiQ’s help to create a unique and magical experience that builds on the LEGO brand values of creativity, fun and learning.
“That’s right. It’s all about a return to the roots of LEGO. The third generation of the Kirk Kristiansen family that founded the LEGO business wanted visitors to rediscover the pure pleasure of playing. So now we are linking today’s digital technology into what is otherwise very much an analog environment,” says Carl Johansson, who is responsible at HiQ for delivering the project.

“The entire project has been characterised by an agile working approach close to our target group – not only families with children in the 4–12 age group, but also restaurant staff. This serves as a good example of how we can use our in-depth technical know-how to produce something truly creative. It has made this a very special project indeed.”