Bijin Sushi is a new "hole in the wall" specialty Japanese bar and restaurant located in downtown Toronto. It is located on 666 Manning avenue, just north of Bloor and adjacent to Toronto's bustling Korea Town. The restaurant seats 20 at the bar and 30 in the dining section. Inside is a cross between a western dive bar and a modern Japanese restaurant. The head chef, Akira Mifune, describes himself as an "artist" and prints out a custom menu with 10-15 new items every other week along with daily sepecials. He is a trained sushi chef from Japan and wants to provide high quality cuisine at an affordable mid-range price.
Arisu is our closest competitor both in terms of location and potential customers. They offer a mix of Korean and Japanese cuisine at reasonable prices. They also have a bar and patio that attracts a younger crowd in the evenings.
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Verdict: The overall appearance comes off as too "busy" for our taste. The navigation is laid on top of the background with little to distinguish it. We'd prefer a sleeker design that draws the eye to only one or two elements at a time. We'd like a more distinguished, modern look rather than the family-friendly, comfort-food-serving impression this site gives off. Also, the PDF menu may give phone users some difficulty.
Manpuku is an established Japanese restaurant located on McCaul street across from the AGO. It's been described as a "modern Japanese eatery" and sells itself on authenticity. Although it does not serve sushi, the restaurant is similar to ours in its percieved authenticity and uniqueness of food. The food is cheap, but difficult to find elsewhere at this price and quality.
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Verdict: Manpuku is similar to Arisu, but stripped of images. It's minimalist colour scheme is effective because it instantly draws the user's attention to the navigation menu and restaurant hours. The Home page is also effective because it is likely to contain all the information some customers need, without delving further into the site. All of its images share the same art style, incuding the map, which ties the site together very well. Again, the PDF menu might annoy phone users.
Sushi KAJI is a high end Japanese restaurant located at 860 The Queensway by Islington Avenue. It only seats 30 and customers typically have to reserve their table in order to dine. It is headed by Mitsuhiro Kaji, a renowned sushi chef who only uses ingredients from Japan. Although Bijin Sushi is not in direct competition with this high end restaurant, it would like to be seen as a mid-range alternative to this gourmet style of sushi.
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Verdict: Sushi KAJI's site follows the same basic design principles of Arisu and Manpuku, but does everything slightly better. It is minimalist in layout, but more modern and professional looking due to its use of borders and well fitted images. The biggest problem the site has is its unnecessarily small font size - the navigation is more visible than on Arisu, but is still small and would be harder to use on phones in comparison to Manpuku.
The owners of Bijin Sushi expect to cater to a predominantly young customer base, between 20 and 40 years of age. This group can be further divided into two main groups: those who come primarily to drink, and those who come primarily for the sushi. The restaurant's brand focuses on sushi and not the liqour, but it should still be clear they have a bar as that draws in customers. It can be assumed that their customers are likely to research the restaurant before deciding to eat there, so a website that leaves a good impression is key for the restaurant's growth. I've decided that it would be best to keep a simple design layout in order to ensure our audience does not become frustrated or confused while navigating the site. This is especially important for a restaurant targeting a young audience because they are more likely to access the site with their phones, possibly right outside the venue. Another reason for a minimalist layout is that it gives the restaurant an sense of class, which is demonstrated in the difference between the crowded Arisu page and the minimalist Manpuku and more professional looking Sushi KAJI site. This website is for a restaurant; we don't need to subject our customers to gaudy features like background music or images of a smiling family.
The primary goal of this website is to hook our audience by giving them fast and easy access to only the most relevant information. Furthermore, an "About" page will cater to the "foodie" audience who are looking for high quality and authentic Japanese sushi.
Bijin Sushi follows the lead of its peers with a minimalistic site design in a fixed width format that is meant to load quickly and be easily navigable. The site features a main heading with the name of the restaurant, which is shown on every page. The footer is also static across every page and inlcudes contact information. On the home page there is a unique navigation menu based on a traditional Japanese tatami mat pattern. This is meant to be eye-catching so that the customer instantly knows what information the site contains and quickly navigate to the page they want. It should also be easy to tap with touch screen phones. The heading remains the same size across every page and also acts as a link back to the Home page. Once out of the Home page, the navigation changes to an inline format, but retains its background image and large padding. This moves the focus of the page to the content below it which is boxed off in red borders and has the page subheading. On our location page, we use a screenshot of Google Maps that acts as a link to the actual Google Maps search. This reduces load time and will trigger phones to open their Google Maps app instead of wrestling with an interactive site map. We think it's important to include a link to Google Maps because it is the primary site people use for directions.
The chosen layout and design scheme of our site resembles Manpuku's, but differs in some important ways. It can actually be seen as a combination of Manpuku's and Sushi KAJI's designs. Like Manpuku, our Home screen contains the most useful information and the navigation. The main difference is that our navigation is given the same prominence as the restaurant's name. Manpuku focuses on the logo, while Sushi KAJI's splash screen is a small square logo. We aren't using a logo and instead have the restaurant's name in English and Japanese in a large imposing sans-serif font. In fact, all the elements of our site are bigger than our competitions', which makes readability and navigation on smaller screens far more pleasant. The red border below the navigation draws the user's eye to the contact information below it and also prepares them for the rest of the site, which continues to use the same header-nav-content layout. Our Return Home link is in yellow and shows up on ever page other than the Home. It acts as a an extra buffer to distinguish page content from contact information.
We followed Manpuku's choice of white text with red highlights with the intention of using the red to its full advantage. Red is a strong colour to use for a restaurant's media in general, because it is known to "excite" and help trigger appetite, along with yellow. Red is not used on the most important parts of our site, rather, it is used around the important parts. For example, the Japanese text of our logo is in no way more important than the English. By putting it in red, the Japanese characters split the page up sectionally in the same way as the red borders. Our English audience (the wide majority) would read Bijin Sushi, see the red characters, and be prompted to read what's underneath. Of course, there is also the obvious connotation of red and white with the Japanese flag, which adds to the "Japanese-ness" of our design. The pure black background maximizes the amount that the red and white text pops from the screen. It also makes our images of sushi look more vibrant. On our Menu page, the images are laid out in the same way as our Home's navigation. With "美人" in the center, it works to further establish our brand by making this a memorable pattern in our customer's minds. The memorable navigation on the Home page is now mirrored by our food.