SAKURA
The Problem
Choosing a dish in a restaurant can be hard—especially with unfamiliar cuisines.
On top of that, the waiting time after ordering can feel long and boring.
The Goal
Design a playful, modern menu for an Asian restaurant that makes choosing easier
and turns waiting time into a fun, social moment.
My Role
Full-stack designer—from research and concept to interaction design and the
final prototype—working within a team of three.
The Setup
This concept was created at the first Make-a-Thon in Zürich, organized by
Friends of Figma. Over the course of 4 hours we experimented with Figma Make,
explored ideas, and built a working prototype.
To generate ideas quickly, we held a rapid brainstorm. In about five minutes of sketching and discussion, we agreed to build a modern, interactive restaurant menu app. (Shown below is our FigJam brainstorming board with key ideas.)
Based on common dining behavior - rather than formal research - we identified the main user challenges. This lean approach was ideal in this fast-paced project. We skipped a full persona in favor of ad-hoc user assumptions to save time.
Decision overload:
New guests, especially those unfamiliar with the cuisine, struggle to choose confidently
Unknown waiting time:
Guests have no sense of how long food preparation will take
Sharing is hard:
When a table wants to share, it’s tricky to align on which dish to pick
Decision overload:
New guests, especially those unfamiliar with the cuisine, struggle to choose confidently
Unknown waiting time:
Guests have no sense of how long food preparation will take
Sharing is hard:
When a table wants to share, it’s tricky to align on which dish to pick
1) Co-op Mini Game
A collaborative game inspired by “Family Style” dining. Guests play together to complete
restaurant-themed tasks. A live leaderboard shows top tables and awards a bonus dessert
to the winners.
2) Find my Plate (Swipe Flow)
A Tinder-like interface where each diner swipes through dishes, showing photo and short
description. Swiping right adds a dish to the cart, left skips it. This quick filter
helps newcomers discover foods without reading the full menu.
3) Shared Dishes (Table Poll)
n in-app poll lets everyone vote on dishes. Results show a ranked list of top picks that can
be added to the order in one tap. This streamlines group decision-making.
In the final 1.5 hours, we iterated on the design through promting and manual adjustments. We completed a clickable cross-platform prototype. It demonstrates all key flows: game, swiping, polling.
Figma Make enabled us to wire logic between screens extremely fast, which is ideal for hackathons. However, I thought that manual tweaking was needed for visual polish. I learned that early-stage prototyping tools excel at speed, but the final UI still requires careful attention.
If we had more time, we would redesign the mini-game with richer graphics and adaptive difficulty, add filtering to the “Find My Plate” feature, and expand on restaurant staff interactions (e.g. live order status).
More Features we discussed:
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