Tableside lets diners order from their phone by scanning a code at the table. The first version worked, but ordering took longer than waving down a server — which defeated the point. I redesigned it around speed, for a context where people are mid-conversation and not giving the screen their full attention.
Tableside
UX/UI Designer
6 weeks
Mobile Web
2024
Restaurant staff reported that some tables gave up on the app entirely and just asked a server — the opposite of the intended outcome. Watching people use it explained why: the menu required four taps to add one item with no modifications, and the cart was hidden behind an icon nobody noticed.
The design challenge wasn't really about the UI at all — it was about designing for divided attention. Most people using this are talking to the people they're with, glancing at their phone between sentences.
Items can be added directly from the menu list with a single tap, with quantity and running total visible in a persistent bottom bar — so people always know what they've ordered without navigating away from the menu.
Customizations — no onions, extra sauce — open as a bottom sheet over the menu rather than a full-screen page, so people return to exactly where they were rather than re-finding their place.
Every screen was tested on an actual phone, at an actual restaurant table, in daylight and low light. Text sizes and tap targets that looked fine on a desktop monitor needed to be noticeably larger in practice.
The redesign cut the time to place a typical order by more than half, and — more importantly to the restaurant partners — the rate of tables abandoning the app and asking a server dropped sharply within the first two weeks of rollout across the pilot locations.