While a lot of businesses and restaurants are now going back to normal after two years of pandemic restrictions, this doesn’t mean that the COVID-19 virus has gone away. For those who are still concerned about dining out safely during times like these, the current set-ups with a lot of restaurants may not be safe enough, even though establishments reassure customers that they sanitize and keep things clean. A couple of designers have created a concept product that may reassure customers still concerned about dining out safely.
Designers: Pin-Yi Lee and You-Hao Wu
We all want to have a safe and clean experience when eating outside of our homes. But sometimes, it’s hard to know when a space has been sanitized already, and these partitions that some establishments use can be inconvenient and actually affects the flow of air. So having something that can solve these issues can be of big help for the restaurant industry and customers that want to dine out already.
The Monomode is something that can work for public eating spaces, even without the threat of the virus. It has a modular kind of structure that can integrate partitions into the furniture but not make it so obstructive. There is a foot pedal that allows you to raise and lower the partitions as needed, like if the person dining next to you is not someone you know. The modules also have cleaning blades inside so it will be more convenient for restaurant workers to clean it after someone uses the table and partition.
The chairs are also part of the module. When a customer sees that the back of the chair is folded, it means that it has already been cleaned. The idea is to use simple behavioral patterns to indicate things like disinfection to give people more confidence about whether or not the space has been cleaned. Since this concept is modular, you can set it up any which way you like it, depending on the space available.
