Tidebox — Bringing Vietnam’s Coastal Food Experience

Tidebox is a food discovery and delivery platform designed around Vietnam’s coastal dining culture. The product connects diners with local seafood restaurants while giving restaurant teams the tools they need to manage menus, orders, promotion.

The goal was to turn a broad food tech concept into a clear, scalable that works across both customer and restaurant experiences.

Role: Product Designer Scope: UX Research · UI Design · Product Strategy · Design System · Prototyping Platform: Mobile App + Restaurant Dashboard

Discovering local seafood restaurants can still feel fragmented. Customers often have to switch between social media, maps, restaurant pages, and delivery apps before deciding where and what to order.

At the same time, smaller restaurant teams need a simpler way to manage digital orders, menu availability, promotions, and customer demand without relying on multiple disconnected tools.

Tidebox was designed to bring both sides into one connected ecosystem.

I designed Tidebox as a two sided platform.

For customers, the experience focuses on quick restaurant discovery, clear menu browsing, ordering, pickup or delivery options, and easy access to local seafood recommendations.

For restaurant teams, Tidebox provides a lightweight management dashboard for handling incoming orders, menu items, promotions, analytics, team settings, and service preferences.

The product was structured around one idea:

The mobile experience helps users move quickly from discovery to checkout.

Users can:

Discover nearby restaurants and seafood spots

Browse curated categories and featured restaurants

Search by dish, cuisine, or restaurant

Compare ratings, distance, preparation time, and offers

Choose between delivery, pickup, and dine-in

Browse detailed menus and popular dishes

Reserve available dining time slots

Track restaurant and order information in one place

The interface prioritizes food imagery and simple navigation so users can make decisions without being overwhelmed.

The restaurant dashboard gives vendors a clear overview of daily operations.

Restaurant teams can:

Monitor new, preparing, and ready orders

View recent customer orders

Add and edit menu items

Set pricing and promotional offers

Manage service modes and delivery settings

Review restaurant performance

Track top-selling menu items

Monitor new and returning customers

Manage team members and permissions

Rather than designing a complex enterprise tool, I kept the dashboard lightweight and task-focused so restaurant staff could complete common actions quickly.

The project started by mapping the needs of two key user groups: diners and restaurant operators.

For diners, the main friction points centered around fragmented restaurant discovery, unclear menus, limited information about preparation time, and inconsistent ordering experiences.

For restaurant operators, the main pain points involved juggling orders, menu updates, promotions, and operational settings across different systems.

These findings helped define the MVP around a small number of high-value flows instead of adding unnecessary features.

The product architecture was divided into two connected experiences.

Home → Search → Restaurant → Menu → Dish → Order → Checkout → Order Status

Dashboard → Orders → Menu Management → Promotions → Analytics → Settings

Keeping these paths simple made it easier to design a scalable system without making the first version feel too complex.

The visual identity was inspired by coastal hospitality rather than traditional fast food delivery apps.

A clean white interface is paired with deep ocean blue, subtle neutral tones, seafood photography, and generous spacing.

This gives Tidebox a fresher and more premium personality while keeping the interface practical and easy to scan.

Interactive prototypes were created for the core customer and restaurant flows.

Testing focused on whether users could quickly:

Find a restaurant

Understand restaurant information

Browse the menu

Choose a service mode

Complete an order

Manage incoming orders

Add or update a menu item

Create a promotion

Feedback was used to simplify navigation, improve labels, reduce unnecessary steps, and clarify status information throughout the experience.