As a technology consultant who have implemented numerous global systems (PeopleSoft, SAP, Oracle, web portals, etc.) I was perturbed by what can be perceived as a lack of testing and basic usability design considerations in a reservations system that is being touted as cutting-edge and sophisticated. My own personal experience with the Next ticketing system was highly unsatisfying.

- I received my "Opening Day" email at 2:42 pm of Wednesday, 4/06. Waited for hours for the password after clicking "Generate Password" on the website and never received it. Tried again at 6:10 pm that day and immediately received the password.
- I picked an incorrect date in May and tried to cancel the selection. I couldn't. There was just no way. I waited for the 10 minute selection timeout to kick out my selection, but it didn't. Instead it re-set it to another 10 minutes. I logged off and logged back pn, and the 10 minute timeout kept resetting. I finally made it to the 7 pm deadline when the website went down for the day, and I think that was how my date choice got cancelled. I'm a big theatergoer, and all the theater websites have facility to cancel ticket purchases. I thought Next was trying to emulate a theater subscription/ticket sales system.
- There is no tech support available. I sent an email to tickets@nextrestaurant.com requesting to cancel a date choice in queue and never got a message back.
- I went back yesterday and first saw the sold out tickets notice. Then when I refreshed throughout the morning, I would see available dates but could not pick the selection. Nick tried to explain what was happening on their Facebook page, so I won't rehash it here. However, as a tech consultant, I would have found out all of these during testing when you play out various user/customer scenarios.

What I'm baffled about is that they took all this time to open the restaurant, why didn't they take a couple of additional weeks to test and work out the kinks of the reservation system, which is as much a core element of Next's value proposition as the menu? I'm sure we could all have waited a little longer for a better, more seamless, more satisfying user interaction with the reservations system. As it is, there are a lot of people who have been totally turned-off by this alleged cutting edge/advanced/sophisticated way of managing restaurant reservations and payments.

Despite my unsatisfying experience, I will still go (I've had a couple of offers from friends who were able to get in to join their tables...again, getting in and purchasing tickets felt a little scattershot). However, as I have found out the hard way in my professional life, under promise and over deliver. I think the reverse is true of the Next reservations system...if I'm going to tout and publicize something heavily, I'm going to make sure it works as it should.

-

We did in fact test the system extensively... but until you roll something out you just don't know how it will react in the wild. And rather than hiring a huge technology company to deliver something that was generic on the back end -- the end we see -- we decided to build it in house with a great programmer.

What we did not expect was that the click rates of users who are NOT in the system would total tens of thousands. It was a mistake to generate emails to those people who were NOT on the invite list. Despite assuring our email host that we were not spammers, they put a lock on our outgoing emails. Mind you, we paid a bunch of money and had authorization for 10,000 emails per day. But still, they locked it down when we sent out 3,000 in the first minute. Then they let it trickle out. Very frustrating. We have now switched to a new host... and fixed a charset issue that plagued about 5% of users and was truly baffling (and would never have been detected in our testing).

As for the lock outs, those are not an error. Once you click on the price you have indeed locked the table. But again user behavior is amazing... when I unlock a table it sells faster than I can refresh the screen -- literally. Yesterday AM we sold 61 tables in 48 seconds and the season was gone. I unlocked, one at a time, another 20 tables -- doing this over time in an effort to be fair -- and they each sold before the screen refresh. So this quote: "I picked an incorrect date in May and tried to cancel the selection. I couldn't." has very little to do with our programming or the system and everything to do with the fact that there are 2,500 people clicking refresh and trying to get the same table.

I am not making excuses -- I would love for this to be totally seamless, and I would love to have 10,000 more tables to sell so that everyone could make a purchase easily. The system is a breeze when there is supply. I believe that we are doing something new that will eventually be something that is smooth as well... and in the meantime I apologize for the frustration and quirks. We are working very hard to correct them.

couple more replies:

"
Anyway, this will all be water under the bridge once they figure things out. That's cool. But really, there is no reason any restaurant that's already received advanced interest in the realm of near 20,000 ticket requests should be overwhelmed or "crushed" at any level. That number was ample warning of what to expect. "

Yes, I expected and planned for 20,000 plus some onlookers -- another 10,000. We got way more than that though because what I didn't expect -- stupidly I guess -- is that those 30,000 people would all expect to get in at once despite the statement on the top of the screen that says:

only users who previously registered to be notified and have received an email from us may log in at this time.
Our full site will launch to the public by May 1, 2011.

well, that apparently had no meaning as tons and tons of people typed in their email anyways. I should have known. This caused all sorts of email issues.


The other issue was that we had a weird charset problem. We would send out a password that looked like xk#$kdow and the user would copy/paste it in and the system would kick it out as invalid. It looked identical on screen... and on the permission side on the back end. But in fact, it was different because of the charset. About 5% of users -- and ironically anyone we entered from an early spreadsheet -- had this issue. It was truly baffling and not something we had known about before or could test for. It should be fixed completely at this point if people generate a new password.

Appreciate the prompt response, Nick. As I have found out the hard way in implementing complex technologies in my professional life, the first time a user encounters a new system is key.

totally agree with that... believe me it didn't all go as planned. But then again, some aspects of it worked even better than I had hoped.

the issue now is this from our end -- and I will be open about it -- how do you make the user experience great for our next 3 months? By then we will have 30,000 people signed up... and can seat 7,500 people roughly per quarter, which is about 2,375 tables. It's a really tough call to know the best way to handle that disparity...

Hi Nick...Have you checked out the Sundance Film Festival model? I have used this in the past and it's pretty seamless, and pretty fair. The key is assigning a randomly generated timeslot over a period of time to the user in order to purchase the ticket. Also, they're explicit that "first come first served" is not in their policy. I think some of the theater organizations in New York (I need to check) follow a similar model. I think the "best practice" models are in the arts organizations because ticketing is such a critical part of their "business model".

I've attached the Sundance instructions below

http://www.sundance.org/festival/tickets/how/

Vitesse98 wrote:I can't believe anyone actually took seriously my totally silly joke of a suggestion that people go in period attire. If, at any time during this restaurant's lifespan, I encounter someone in period garb, I will never come back again, no matter how good the food is or gets. I mean, come on. Save it for the Ren Faire.

Really? Men's fashions really haven't changed in 100 years, and I can think of a few women who would totally rock that look. I'd be all for it.

Being a student of history, I forsee a romantic Valentine's day theme of Chicago 1929. Or maybe London, 1888 in late October.

Independent George wrote:

Vitesse98 wrote:I can't believe anyone actually took seriously my totally silly joke of a suggestion that people go in period attire. If, at any time during this restaurant's lifespan, I encounter someone in period garb, I will never come back again, no matter how good the food is or gets. I mean, come on. Save it for the Ren Faire.

Really? Men's fashions really haven't changed in 100 years, and I can think of a few women who would totally rock that look. I'd be all for it.

Being a student of history, I forsee a romantic Valentine's day theme of Chicago 1929. Or maybe London, 1888 in late October.

I, for one, will be rocking Hong Kong 2036.

fusionfan wrote:Hi Nick...Have you checked out the Sundance Film Festival model? I have used this in the past and it's pretty seamless, and pretty fair. The key is assigning a randomly generated timeslot over a period of time to the user in order to purchase the ticket. Also, they're explicit that "first come first served" is not in their policy. I think some of the theater organizations in New York (I need to check) follow a similar model. I think the "best practice" models are in the arts organizations because ticketing is such a critical part of their "business model".

I've attached the Sundance instructions below

http://www.sundance.org/festival/tickets/how/

Sounds like a lottery to me, nice.

happy_stomach wrote:

Vitesse98 wrote:I can't believe anyone actually took seriously my totally silly joke of a suggestion that people go in period attire. If, at any time during this restaurant's lifespan, I encounter someone in period garb, I will never come back again, no matter how good the food is or gets. I mean, come on. Save it for the Ren Faire.

happy_stomach wrote:But maybe this setting is too stiff for that?

So, I guess to answer my own question...very yes.

No. Vitesse98 would answer 'yes.' And I would disagree with him; I think it would be completely cool and fascinating. If you're excited about going dressed up for Paris 1906 or Bangkok 2060 or anything else, go for it! I don't think I see myself doing it--I'm not sure--but I disagree completely with anyone who wants to dictate what someone else can or can't wear, especially given the "exploration" theme that Next has emphasized.

Dmnkly wrote:I, for one, will be rocking Hong Kong 2036.

Havana 1955 would be pretty awesome with or without period garb.

Nick, I haven't really seen any explanation of the DNS snafu...was it just a question of the switch being thrown too late due to a lack of understanding of the normal amount of time such things take? As late as last night, I was still getting the "Coming Soon" site on my PC at home. It was extremely frustrating to have a legitimate login/password for the site and to not be able to access it at all due to the quirks of Internet topography.

The funny thing to me is, the system worked seemlessly. I got my email at about 2:15, went to the site, entered my email address, immediately received my password via email, signed in, entered my cc info, selected my date/time, selected my wine option, and completed the reservation. I then completed the same process for a table for a coworker who didn't sign up to be notified until very late. A friend of mine, who signed up for notification as early as I did had the exact same experience.

I have to say I'm a bit confused as to how the system worked so perfectly for both my friend and I and how so many people just had a disaster.

Speaking as a technology professional, there’s 2 key things to be learned here: performance/stress testing, and human-computer interaction. I have no doubt that skills were abundant in building and launching this system, but perhaps not experienced enough to consider all the ‘what-if’s.

Another consideration might have been the use of a protected, secured site, rather than an open site where onlookers all want in on the action. Or, if they did get in, have a mechanism to validate their email and respond accordingly. Remember, it is human nature not to pay attention to instructions, even if it is right in their face in screaming neon.

It took FIFTEEN hours for me to receive the password email. I had to leave work in the middle of the afternoon and get home to use Safari because of the IE issue. Overall, I just felt very tired from this whole experience.
One more thing… the transfer of tickets. Maybe I got it wrong, but somewhere in the barrage of publicity leading to this week, I remembered reading about tickets being non-transferrable. But now they are. And you’ve given the occasion for opportunistic people to ride on your coattails.

Anyway, coulda, shoulda, woulda. I’m done with this feeding frenzy. Next!

yellow truffle wrote:

fusionfan wrote:Hi Nick...Have you checked out the Sundance Film Festival model? I have used this in the past and it's pretty seamless, and pretty fair. The key is assigning a randomly generated timeslot over a period of time to the user in order to purchase the ticket. Also, they're explicit that "first come first served" is not in their policy. I think some of the theater organizations in New York (I need to check) follow a similar model. I think the "best practice" models are in the arts organizations because ticketing is such a critical part of their "business model".

I've attached the Sundance instructions below

http://www.sundance.org/festival/tickets/how/

Sounds like a lottery to me, nice.

Yeah, but it's a thoughtful lottery. And Redford and company have had this formula for years.

Best would be a combination of straight-ahead sales (current system), lottery and auction. Bringing the top-end of the sales in house for auction seems like an especially good idea and one that the Cubs were out front on. Holding back a percentage of seats for auction on a rolling-forward basis in particular would box out most of the free riding arbitragers doing what I believe is illegal on Craigslist (ahem, I mean selling tix for over face). It would also boost revenue and allow patrons who can't reasonably spend hours online or can't plan that far in advance to lock in a ticket. Many of us here are food/chef fan-geeks but I'd think a more eclectic mix of diners would result from a more diverse approach. It will be interesting to hear what the "average" diners will be like at Next compared to other places owing solely to the self-selecting aspects of the ticketing system. Regardless of the Craigslist flippers, I'm sure it's only a short matter of time until the legal, licensed brokers here start selling Next tickets.

I still haven't gotten the email :-/

(But I can't say with 100% certainty that I didn't screw up the signup, so take that for what it's worth.)

but I disagree completely with anyone who wants to dictate what someone else can or can't wear

Tell it to, I don't know, Alinea. That's the only time I've worn a suit in recent memory aside from weddings and funerals, but I had no trouble conforming per instructions/restrictions.

Anyway, who is dictating what anyone can wear? Go in your undies, for all I care, but I won't be there to see you! Tangent though this may be to the matters at hand - food, service, tickets - absolutely nothing else beside the food (and even that is a very grey area) is period authentic, so why anyone would even humor dressing in character is beyond me. But more power to the togas and tiaras crowd, I guess.

I appreciate Nick chiming in, btw. Next, as with Alinea, has always been ace at communication, and especially when breaking new ground and moving forward, communication is key here. No one can expect everything to work out perfectly, just equitably. As long as it's erratic and unfair for everyone, more or less, I can deal! Certainly I'll take erratic over unprofessional, which Next (like Alinea) most certainly is not.

My preferred method would be to auction tables during the 7-9 peak hours, and leave the ticketing system as-is for the remaining hours.

Hey, anyone else eat at Next yet?

jesteinf wrote:Hey, anyone else eat at Next yet?

Hey buddy! Who do you think you are, bringing us back on topic?

nick.kokonas wrote:
The other issue was that we had a weird charset problem. We would send out a password that looked like xk#$kdow and the user would copy/paste it in and the system would kick it out as invalid. It looked identical on screen... and on the permission side on the back end. But in fact, it was different because of the charset. About 5% of users -- and ironically anyone we entered from an early spreadsheet -- had this issue. It was truly baffling and not something we had known about before or could test for. It should be fixed completely at this point if people generate a new password.

Thanks for the explanation - this is exactly what happened to me. Although I find it frustrating that I was on an early spreadsheet and got completely shut out of buying a ticket. Sore loser!

And happy_stomach, wear the dress!!!

In the article mentioning the scalping of Next's tickets I'm actually one of the listings in the image. I posted two tickets for tomorrow and asking $1k. The main reason was I was unable to find a companion to join me for dinner, but I since have and would much rather go.

However, the posting has been up for a day now and there hasn't been ANY interest at $1k..no one seems to be paying that money.

Since I am going there are a few questions I had.

1. Is there a dress code? Would jeans and a nice shirt be sufficient?

2. When I purchased the tickets I opted for the water. Is it possible to add on wine or no?

3. Is wine from the outside allowed to be brought in? If so, is there a corkage fee and how much?

Townshend wrote:Since I am going there are a few questions I had.

1. Is there a dress code? Would jeans and a nice shirt be sufficient?

2. When I purchased the tickets I opted for the water. Is it possible to add on wine or no?

3. Is wine from the outside allowed to be brought in? If so, is there a corkage fee and how much?

Townshend, I believe questions like these are probably best answered by Next.

David Hammond wrote:

Townshend wrote:Since I am going there are a few questions I had.

1. Is there a dress code? Would jeans and a nice shirt be sufficient?

2. When I purchased the tickets I opted for the water. Is it possible to add on wine or no?

3. Is wine from the outside allowed to be brought in? If so, is there a corkage fee and how much?

Townshend, I believe questions like these are probably best answered by Next.

I agree, however, I noticed Nick is posting answers here. Also I figured I'd ask here to share the answers with the community in case others had similar questions. Also aside from two e-mail addresses I don't see a way to contact them.

Now that all of the tables are taken, are there any plans to communicate with people on the email list who were not sent emails offering tables. I was late in signing up (I didn't think that I was THAT late, but so it goes) and I have not received any communication from NEXT.

I think that - at some point - it would be a graceful thing to do and would build goodwill. Will the people who were not first for this rollout, be first for the next. I.e., will Next continue with the list in order for the next season (inviting those who could not dine at Next), will they begin with those who have dined there previously, or will they start a new list. Obviously this is a cost of success, which is surely more pleasurable to deal with than the cost of failure.

GAF: The question of fairness is complicated. I got an email, tried about a dozen times, but first got a message that they were "offline," and then got a message that they were sold out. Given that I do have to earn a living, I had to give up. I hope I, too, would get an invite in the next batch.

Townshend wrote:Since I am going there are a few questions I had.

1. Is there a dress code? Would jeans and a nice shirt be sufficient?

2. When I purchased the tickets I opted for the water. Is it possible to add on wine or no?

3. Is wine from the outside allowed to be brought in? If so, is there a corkage fee and how much?

They have answered these questions on their FaceBook page if you check there, but it appears that you cannot add wine after selecting water and you cannot bring outside wine in. You should check FB to be certain however.

Also, someone just posted their reservation on FB at face value as they had a change in travel plans, it's a 4 top for May 12th if anyone is interested. Hopefully there is more of that sort of thing that will occur in the future.

I'm still dreaming of that duck - yowza!

*edited to add a link to the FB page, that might be helpful http://www.facebook.com/pages/Next-Rest ... 3845229862

Ursiform wrote:

Townshend wrote:Since I am going there are a few questions I had.

1. Is there a dress code? Would jeans and a nice shirt be sufficient?

2. When I purchased the tickets I opted for the water. Is it possible to add on wine or no?

3. Is wine from the outside allowed to be brought in? If so, is there a corkage fee and how much?

They have answered these questions on their FaceBook page if you check there, but it appears that you cannot add wine after selecting water and you cannot bring outside wine in. You should check FB to be certain however.

Also, someone just posted their reservation on FB at face value as they had a change in travel plans, it's a 4 top for May 12th if anyone is interested. Hopefully there is more of that sort of thing that will occur in the future.

I'm still dreaming of that duck - yowza!

*edited to add a link to the FB page, that might be helpful http://www.facebook.com/pages/Next-Rest ... 3845229862

Thank you, I'll check out their page now.