YourMenu Case 4 of 4
Ordering dinner in Japan without speaking Japanese
A concept app: pick dishes, see names, prices and translations, then show your phone to the waiter.
In short
Japan gets tens of millions of foreign visitors a year, and most can’t read a Japanese menu. YourMenu shows dishes with names, prices and translations: pick what you want and show your phone to the waiter.
Goal
Tourists order what they actually want, and restaurants serve people they couldn’t talk to before.
Success metrics
- Orders placed without help from staff
- Time from sitting down to ordering
- Ordering mistakes
- Restaurants listing their menu
- Diner ratings after the meal
Discovery
Surveys of travellers and of restaurants in Japan, turned into personas for both sides.
Structure
The information architecture came before any screens: one path for diners, one for restaurants.
The design
Help the waiter, don’t replace them
Talking to the waiter is part of eating out, so the main screen is something you show, not a checkout.
English first
Most visitors from outside Asia come from the US and Australia. The structure lets more languages follow without redesigning a screen.
Built for a first-time user
It has to make sense in seconds, with a waiter standing there: a big photo, a clear price and one obvious action per dish.
A small system first
Colours, type and a few components came first, so every screen is built from the same parts.
Looking back
Today I’d test it in real restaurants and use AI to translate a menu straight from a photo. Designing for someone abroad, hungry and a little lost, taught me to strip everything back to what helps in that one moment at the table.
