Designing a kitchen display cooks actually look at
Three rewrites, one very patient chef, and the font size that turned out to matter most.
A kitchen display is read from two and a half metres away, by someone holding a pan, through steam, in a room where the screen is the least interesting thing present. Almost every design instinct that works elsewhere is wrong here.
Room number before anything else
Our first version led with the order number, because that is how the database thinks. Cooks do not care about order numbers; they care about which room the plate is going to and how late it is. Room number went to 36px and the order ID shrank to a footnote.
The timer is the interface
At 34px, tabular, turning amber at 70% of target and red with a blink over it, the timer does the work of a dozen status labels. Nobody reads 'PREPARING'. Everybody reads a number going red.
Make the late one impossible to miss and you will not need to tell me which one is late.
Dark, but not fashionably dark
The ground is #111 because kitchens are bright and a white screen washes out under service lighting. The card is #1C1C1C so the edge is visible without a border. Amber and red are the only colours that carry meaning — everything else is white or grey, so that when something turns amber it means something.