Prototype > survey

One of my favourite things about travelling in Japan is the hotel buffet. Beyond the variety of local dishes, most hotels also serve an international spread to accommodate travellers—making the dining room the perfect place to observe people across cultures.

Watching people at a buffet feels like observing a live usability test. You can learn a lot from how people eat—the utensils they choose, the food they prioritise, even how they arrange their plates. Sometimes, just by looking at a tray, you can guess whether it belongs to a Japanese guest or a foreign visitor.

If behaviour is what people do when they think no one is watching—consciously or not—then buffets are a perfect prototype for hotel usability testing. No one feels observed; everyone acts naturally, revealing patterns that might otherwise stay hidden.

Hotels could easily learn from this. By analysing leftover quantities and comparing them to guest demographics by season, they could refine their menus and improve future service.

Prototyping, after all, is about observing what people do, not what they say they’ll do. Surveys, on the other hand, rely on predicting the right questions and expecting people to imagine their future behaviour—which isn’t always accurate.

In the short term, building prototypes may seem more costly than running surveys. But over time, prototypes reveal truths that data alone can’t. They help us adapt our products and services more precisely.