Updated Mar 1, 2025
Consumer Product Design
2024 – 2025
Figma to Table: Designing Guest App
A reflection on building the best tableside dining product. Designed to showcase the menu and elevate the experience experience, and speed up service.
A new side of tableside service
Video and photo-first layouts highlight each restaurant’s latest offerings and signature dishes, while the beloved item grid from our Kiosk keeps menu browsing fast and intuitive.
By working closely with restaurant design partners, we crafted a standout tableside experience—one that reimagines hospitality for the TikTok era by seamlessly blending content with convenience.
Guest App has captured the attention and imagination of our partners, quickly becoming a standout feature in demos—and a key reason restaurants choose Snackpass.
Adapting Kiosk for dine-in
Snackpass built its reputation on seamless pickup orders for quick-serve restaurants. Shifting to dine-in, we started with a handheld tablet version of our Kiosk. It worked well enough—but it didn’t wow restaurant owners.
Kiosk was great at busting lines, but tableside service is different. A well-trained server could still provide a better experience—guiding first-time guests, highlighting specials, and telling the restaurant’s story.
But not every server is well-trained. This was our opportunity. We needed to make Guest App the best server—every time.
Guest App adds space to share brand stories, something we wouldn't do on pickup Kiosk.
Rethinking the guest journey
Kiosk is built for speed. We optimized the the ordering process for single transactions: add everything, then check out once.
Dine-in is different. Guests order in rounds, sending items to the kitchen as they go. It’s a more relaxed experience—one they settle into—while restaurants use it to shape the vibe and encourage discovery.
We needed to design for open-tab dining—a seamless, intuitive experience that felt effortless for guests and efficient for restaurants.
Open-tab lets guest continue to order after sending items to the kitchen.
Distilling a hundred iterations
Designing the perfect experience wasn’t a straight path. We worked iteratively with our restaurant design partners—refining the look and feel through constant feedback.
I built Figma prototypes to test new layouts, while partners shared their thoughts, sometimes even sketching rough ideas. We also studied digital dine-in menus from Asian markets, where the concept less novel.
But in trying to accommodate various restaurant requests, the product became cluttered and overcomplicated. I took a step back to defined two core principles:
Content comes first.
It must be 10x better than ordering from a server.
These principles became my north star. If the UI ever felt like it was competing with the content, or it would be better to just talk to a person, I knew we were going in the wrong direction.
Early iterations exploring grids, tag placement, and navigation.
Team
Working alongside a PM, engineers, and a researcher, we moved fast—designing, developing, and deploying quickly to gather real-world learnings from restaurants and their guests.
As the only designer, I had to cut through the noise, stay true to my principles, and advocate for decisions that often came down to instinct and taste.
A return to simplicity
There’s something interesting about first ideas—they’re often right. It’s as if your subconscious already knows the answer, but you go through the iterations anyway, trying to prove yourself wrong.
The version we trialed with customers introduced a flexible grid system for more advanced layouts. Restaurants could customize sections, displaying up to six items at once, with horizontal paging and vertical scrolling for larger menus. But customers found it confusing to navigate.
We experimented with solutions—arrows, page dots, tabbed links—but nothing felt right. The flexible layouts often made images too small, and instead of deciding what to order, guests were just trying to figure out how to order.
I made the case to return to an earlier iteration—one that traded flexibility for simplicity. Pages were either full-screen or half-screen, never scrolled, and guests could browse by swiping up like TikTok, or right to find the classic Kiosk grid. These changes put the content back in focus and made navigation feel natural.
In hindsight, it felt obvious. But we needed the journey of iterations to see it clearly.
Navigation explorations, scroll hinting, page dots and more.
A guest experience worth savoring
Our work culminated in a beautiful, engaging, and customer-friendly tableside ordering experience—one that celebrates the cuisine, brings the restaurant’s story to life, and delivers the hospitality of the best server on their best day, every time.
To transform our best-in-class quick-serve Kiosk into a true tableside companion, we introduced content-focus layouts, intuitive navigation, and support for open-tab dining.
We designed something guests want to hold in their hands and flip through. With Highlights, menu items come to life through video and photography—no need to pull out a phone to search. Guest App lets restaurants guide customers and elevate the dining experience without training additional servers.
Highlights, item modification, customized tip screen.
Outcome and impact
Guest App is now rolling out to early dine-in customers—and it’s already a key selling point for new partners curious about Snackpass.
Early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Restaurants are excited to showcase their menus in a more visual, engaging way while streamlining service, reducing pressure on staff, and keeping guests happy.
Customers are discovering new favorites at the restaurants they love. They find the UI delightful and enjoy ordering on their own terms.
The best part? When they’re ready to pay, there’s no need to flag down a server—making the experience smoother for guests and helping restaurants turn tables even faster.
"Host" onboarding flow guides guests through dining options and how to browse the menu.
Designs in detail
Browse the menu
Switch to the Menu tab to scroll through the familiar grid layout—or use the sidebar to quickly jump to what you're looking for.
Review and pay
A simplified checkout screen lets you close out your tab whenever you're ready. And if you need to pay with cash, we'll let the server know to come by.
Go halfsies or split it any way you want
A quick toggle makes it easy to divide the check evenly, or use split by amount to pay for just your share, no Vemmo required.
A custom keyboard that's just your type
By replacing the default Android keyboard with a simpler, centered one, it's easier to enter a name for the order without interrupting the flow.
Reflections
Designing Guest App taught me how to balance restaurant requests with our own vision for the future.
As a designer, my role goes beyond just making screens—I’m here to champion the best customer experience, educate stakeholders on key decisions, and ensure we uphold a high bar for craft.
A great product isn’t built overnight. It takes hundreds of iterations to refine, and it’s my responsibility to guide the team toward that final, polished experience.