Intelligent Menu Management
Re-architecting the menu infrastructure to resolve control overload and cut task time by 85%
Role
Tools
Focus
Broken Hierarchy and Control Overload
The legacy system wasn't just visually dated; it suffered from a lack of clear hierarchy. Instead of a guided experience, the interface presented primary daily tasks and rare settings with the exact same visual weight.
Because nothing was prioritized, operating the dashboard felt like sitting in an unorganized airplane cockpit. Users were confronted with every possible configuration and feature at once, leading to control overload. This created confusion before a single menu edit was even made.
Legacy vs. redesign: a heavy side navigation gave way to a streamlined top nav, letting the actual menu items become the protagonists of the screen.
Structuring the Input Logic
The old creation process forced users to face an intimidating wall of inputs all at once, which often led to confusion and mistakes. To fix this, I reorganized how data is entered. Instead of overwhelming the merchant, the new form breaks information down into clear, manageable sections. Complex details like pricing rules or item modifiers are only revealed when they're actually needed.
By relying strictly on Nexus, our design system, every form field and layout was standardized, giving engineering components that were already built: fewer one-off pieces, faster handoff.
A streamlined creation flow: sectioned inputs, a contextual menu explorer, and a full-screen AI assistant work together to simplify complex data entry.
Consistent Experience Across Form Factors
A menu update doesn't live on one screen. The same menu item or pricing change has to appear identically on the handheld POS, the terminal, and mobile, each with a different screen size and interaction pattern.
My focus was the experience layer: making sure a merchant saw a familiar, consistent interface no matter which device they were standing in front of. Because every screen was built from Nexus, form fields, states, and components held their shape across contexts. The handheld and terminal in particular were streamlined for speed, built for a merchant moving quickly in a busy restaurant or bar rather than sitting at a back-office desk.
Cross-platform consistency: the same menu stayed familiar across mobile, handheld, and terminal, with the handheld and terminal streamlined for speed in busy, high-traffic environments.
AI-Powered Automation
Even with a streamlined form, complex promotions like BOGO deals or temporal pricing rules still meant merchants either pieced together settings manually or reached out to support, adding friction on both sides. An AI layer could remove that dependency entirely.
I integrated an AI assistant that translates a plain-language request into the same structured form fields already built for manual entry. A manager can describe a promotion in their own words, and the assistant maps it to the correct temporal rules and item relationships, pre-filling the configuration for review. Merchants keep full manual control for edge cases, or use the AI path to skip the setup entirely, without ever needing to contact support. The feature was beta-tested with real merchants and has since launched.
From prompt to review: a manager types "I want a BOGO deal for free churros with appetizers on Tuesdays 4-6." The assistant parses the request, maps the temporal rules and item relationships, and pre-fills the form for review before saving.
Impact on Time-on-Task
By fixing the structural hierarchy, standardizing inputs, and layering in AI assistance, the workflow for managing complex catalogs changed shape entirely.
Menu updates that previously took minutes of manual trial and error now take seconds. Based on informal feedback from beta merchants, this represents an estimated 85% reduction in time-on-task for complex configurations.
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