Tricks with tips or emotion-driven user experience

Dinn is an AI-powered platform for restaurants and cafés that brings digital menus, table ordering, payments, cashless tips, and analytics together to simplify daily operations and improve the guest experience.

My role: As Dinn’s founding designer, I designed the guest tipping experience and B2B payment management interface, working directly with the founder to shape the product.

Task

The main challenge that QR menus and tipping services face, beyond integration with a venue's original menu, is that digital tipping is emotionless. It's super useful to pay contactlessly, but you won't get the same positive feedback from a waiter as you do with cash tips. Actually, guests are not always even sure that the waiter got this money, it's not transparent enough.

Insight

The rise of QR menus and contactless tipping services was due to COVID, of course, but that was 5 years ago (I'm also in shock, by the way, about how fast time flies). Reducing printing costs and improving safety were the main benefits of digital tipping.

But then AI happened and changed everything, but not the way we tip and use digital menus!

Nowadays, in just a few seconds, cafe can convert paper or PDF menu into a perfect-looking and fully customizable web app. One more second, and a restaurant's menu is translated into any language. Dish descriptions are instantly enhanced with allergens and ingredients. Alternatively, a venue can create the perfect dish description simply by uploading a photo. Sounds great, huh?

Principles

But back to tips. As a Founding Designer, I decided to add emotions into the interaction between guests and waiters, while keeping the payment flow as simple as getting cash from a wallet.

My recipe of a perfect digital tip service:

Integration with the most popular payment methods in a region
Minimum taps to pay and only essential elements
Transparent payment details, hide nothing important
Agile layout that adapts to any venue
Emotional feedback (not boring)

Solution

Tips shouldn't feel like paying taxes or yet another transaction. It should feel like a genuine thank you — instant and warm moment of gratitude.

With Dinn, digital tipping becomes personal again.

I've had the pleasure of working with Aleksei on several projects, including KarKar, and now as co-founders of Dinn.

What I value most about Aleksei is that he's much more than a talented designer. He has a great ability to see the bigger picture, challenge assumptions, and bring fresh, creative ideas to the table. He's never afraid to question decisions, including his own, and I believe that kind of critical thinking and self-awareness is what makes him such a strong partner.

Aleksei combines great design taste with a deep understanding of products and business. He's reliable, proactive, and genuinely cares about what we're building. Our discussions aren't always about agreeing with each other, and that's exactly what makes working together so valuable.

After everything we've worked on together, I can confidently say that Aleksei is someone I'd be happy to build another product with, again and again!

Artyom K.Founder · Dinn