MEEA

A table first digital menu that gives guests more control, clarity, and confidence while dining.

Year
2025

Industry
UX Design

Team
3 Members

Duration
10 Weeks

Problem

Restaurant guests leave feeling unsatisfied when their dining needs aren't met

Many restaurant customers leave feeling unsatisfied because their needs around ordering, communicating, and general knowledge about their food are not properly met, leading to a disappointing dining experience.

Solution

Give guests more control, clarity, and confidence while dining

Menu Browsing / Discovery

Explore the menu with clarity and confidence, without interrupting the moment.

Accessibility & Display Settings

Adjust the menu to match your comfort, from lighting and language to motion and visibility, directly at the table.

Payment & Checkout

Complete the check with clarity and ease, without disrupting the flow of the meal.

Exploration and Direction

Exploring how technology could improve the restaurant experience

We began by broadly exploring the restaurant industry and asking ourselves "how might technology improve the dining experience while maintaining familiar patterns of interaction"?

Our early concepts focused on mobile based solutions, including QR code payments and phone driven bill splitting. These ideas aimed to reduce friction around payment and make group dining more seamless.

Exploring how technology could improve dining

User Interviews + Insight Switch

Research revealed tension between convenience and presence

Through interviews and additional research methods, we uncovered a recurring theme: many guests felt uncomfortable using their phones during meals.

While digital tools were often introduced to make dining more convenient, many guests described moments where these interactions pulled attention away from the table. Rather than supporting conversation, phone based interactions frequently disrupted it.

Guests consistently expressed that phones often:

Distract from conversation
Feel socially inappropriate at the table
Interrupt the natural flow of dining together

Many guests felt uncomfortable using their phones during meals.

Design Response

Embedding a digital device inside a physical binding

In response, our team shifted toward designing a dedicated physical and digital product. Creating a menu that lives on the table itself.

Competitive Landscape + Opportunity

Industry norms help explain why this tension persists

Our analysis showed that many existing solutions are designed to optimize efficiency, speed, or transactions. While effective in operational contexts, these systems frequently depend on guests using personal devices during meals, reinforcing the same distractions surfaced during our research.

Recognizing this pattern clarified an opportunity: to design a solution that meets modern dining needs while reducing reliance on behaviors guests already find disruptive.

Competitive landscape and industry norms

User Persona

Mike

Personality Traits

Charismatic with high expectations
Business focused, detail oriented, efficiency is key
Strong respect for the art of the restaurant

Goals and Motivations

Impress his family, friends, and clients with the hottest dining on his dollar
Cater to the needs (allergies, preferences) of multiple people at the table
Have good timing and interactions with servers

Frustrations & Pain Points

Not being able to reach the server when needed
Lack of menu accessibility for different guests
Feeling out of control, misinformed or uninformed about mishaps

Low fidelity Exploration

Exploring structure and flow through early wireframes. These low fidelity wireframes were used to explore layout, hierarchy, and core interaction flows.