MAREA

Coffee, cuisine & bar

"Research and design on how to translate the experience and daily transformation of a hybrid gastronomic space to the web."

Conceptual demos

FIG 01. Structural representation of the solution© Gonzalo Daniel Vega

01 / CONTEXT

The starting point of the challenge

I developed MAREA as a conceptual demo for UXnicorp with the goal of researching the gastronomic industry and understanding how to build more useful digital experiences for restaurants, cafés, and bars. During the research, I found many businesses that had no website at all, relied almost exclusively on Instagram, or existed digitally only through Google Maps. I felt that severely limited how they could present themselves. The idea behind MAREA was to create a space of its own — a site that doesn't just inform, but conveys the identity, rhythm, and experience of the place. I didn't want to just design a website for "checking the menu." I wanted to build a digital experience that made you feel what it's like to be at MAREA, even before arriving.

02 / RESEARCH

Digging beneath the surface: What did I investigate?

I analyzed numerous gastronomic sites — cafés, restaurants, bars, and hybrid concepts. I found several recurring problems:

Menus that were hard to read.
Confusing mobile navigation.
Excessive dependence on Instagram.
Unclear opening hours.
An oversaturation of unnecessary animations.
Visually attractive but uncomfortable-to-use experiences.

I also noticed something important: the sites showed food, but very few managed to convey the experience of the place. They felt like catalogs, not living spaces. Moreover, most treated all the business's experiences as one single thing, when in reality many places change completely depending on the time of day.

INSIGHT REVEALED

THE SYNTHESIS

"The project shifted when I understood that MAREA shouldn't feel like "a restaurant." It had to feel like a space that transforms. It wasn't just coffee, cuisine, or bar. It was three distinct experiences sharing the same space. And that completely impacted the structure, the storytelling, the navigation, the visual tone, and the overall site experience. I also understood that the site shouldn't replace the physical experience — it should complement it. The website had to function as an extension of the real space, not a digital brochure with pretty photos."

Understanding this pillar completely transformed the tactical direction of the project, allowing unnecessary noise to be filtered out and focusing on strict value.

03 / TACTICS

Tradeoff Analysis: options on the table

Building custom software requires honestly evaluating scenarios. No architecture is perfect — every decision has a price:

OPTION 1

Traditional gastronomic website

Simpler and more familiar, but poorly differentiated and it didn't communicate the daily transformation.

OPTION 2

Prioritize visual impact exclusively

More initially striking, but less usable and clear.

OPTION 3

Build an atmospheric editorial experience

More identity and personality, but greater visual and conceptual complexity.

OPTION 4

Dynamic system with a time-based backend

Variable experiences based on server time, but too complex for a conceptual demo.

04 / DETERMINATION

The Decision: The path chosen

I designed MAREA as a hybrid experience: part branding, part gastronomic exploration, and part digital extension of the physical space. The structure was organized around the moments of the day, the experiences, the events, the products, and the atmosphere. That's why I clearly separated café, cuisine, and bar as distinct identities within the same ecosystem. I also made very deliberate visual choices — editorial layouts, large cards, clean navigation, elegant typography, a measured visual rhythm, and a contemporary aesthetic without tipping into excessive luxury. I included tools like "Build Your Order" not to replace waitstaff or turn the site into a delivery platform, but to complement the in-person experience and reduce friction when ordering.

WHAT ACTUALLY WORKED

What worked best was the overall feeling of the project. The site manages to convey that MAREA isn't just a place to eat — it's an experience that changes depending on the time of day. The separation of the three experiences, the event calendar, the editorial visual system, the scroll rhythm, the clear navigation, and the presentation of products and spaces all worked especially well. The visual approach helped the experience feel more premium and polished without losing warmth or approachability.

LIMITATIONS & TRADE-OFFS

The biggest tradeoff was keeping the project as a conceptual demo without a real backend. That made it possible to build a simple, clear, and easy-to-explore experience, but limited many ideas that could have taken the concept much further: automatic visual changes based on time of day, dynamic product rendering, live events, or real-time manageable content. I also prioritized atmosphere and visual experience over complex functionalities typical of e-commerce or delivery, because the intention was never to compete with ordering apps, but to build a digital experience coherent with the physical space. And to be honest, the concept of "time-based transformation" ended up being more suggested than actually implemented. In the current demo, the three experiences coexist visually, but they don't dynamically mutate the way I originally envisioned.

FROM GONZALO'S PERSONAL LOGBOOK: WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENTLY TODAY?

"I would develop a much more dynamic version of the project. I'd love to explore a system where the site genuinely changes depending on the time of day: different colors, dynamically highlighted experiences, contextual events, and a more living visual identity. I would also go even deeper into the idea of "transformation" as the core of the project, because it ended up being the strongest concept of the entire experience and I feel I only got halfway in executing it."

Retrospective note after launch

Gonzalo Daniel Vega — 2025 — SFV Catamarca, Catamarca