Redesign of product is a chance to revisit past assumptions and champion user-centered design
Conceptual design direction for new POS application, showing ordering view.
What? Redesign of mobile POS application and back office web application with user research and evaluation feeding into design solution.
Why? The current mobile point-of-sale software and hardware could no longer adequately keep up with customer needs. The operating system could no longer be updated, the tablet responsiveness was suboptimal, and the software was chock full of customization.
Who? The new POS would be designed specifically for counter service restaurants. I worked with counter service merchants, the owners, managers, and employees to better understand their needs and workflows. I worked closely with the user experience (UX), product management, and product marketing teams to identify topics of research and evaluation, include in studies, and share learnings with.
How? I planned and led the user research program of defining user profiles, task analysis, and ongoing user studies of concepts, designs, and flows. I worked closely with product management, the UX team, and product marketing in translating that into flows and advising on design.
More details... One track I followed was defining the users of the software and back office tools. This took the form of user profiles and task analysis.
Beginning with the primary user of the POS, the counter person, I created a provisional profile that we would further vet and iterate through follow-on research. This profile was created through primary research of interviews and user studies and secondary research from subject matter experts and job descriptions.
I then broke down the typical tasks done by the counter employee along with pain points and potential opportunities for the POS or other system to address. The team discussed this and identified base tasks to support, with further exploration post-MVP release of the product. We also posted the profiles on the walls in the office, introduced them to the teams in a company meeting, and began to use them in discussions and artifacts.
Working with the UX and UI designers, we created several concept maps and process workflows for key task areas prior to delving deeply into wireframes.
In this iterative, agile project, we scheduled bi-weekly user studies to assess concepts and designs as we went. This included in-person user testing and interviews, remote testing, and card sorting activities. The findings were quickly discussed with UX and PM, next steps identified, and iterative changes made.
We also reviewed competitive POS products and analogous applications for certain features (e.g., catalog management and reporting, etc.).
One of the core decisions in the design and development of the new application was the use of Google's Material Design. The UX team championed adopting these guidelines for a consistent and modern interface. But because they are still new with many patterns in development and evolving, we made sure to test this with users who may not be familiar with Android or these new styles.
As a result of user studies, we did adjust font sizes and button placement for improved usability. We also quickly learned the importance of testing with animations as it provides critical system feedback. Thereafter, the UI designer used a prototyping tool that supports mobile gestures and animations.
I also wrote user stories for the reporting aspects of this project, using the needs we learned of from counter service owners and managers.
Note: this overall redesign and rebuild project ended prior to release because of a change in direction in the company.
Here is a subset of research and design artifacts.
Who are the users of this POS? Profiles for type of business and for the manager.
Who are the users? Profile of counter service help.
Who are the users and what do they do? Task analysis for counter service help.
Concept map for POS functions.
User stories for menu and catalog management and usage.
Process flows for part of catalog management, based on user stories.
Process flow for preliminary set of tasks available for ordering and payment in the POS application, with call outs for sprint work.
User study - snippets from script from one user study during proejct. This is for interview and test with counter service servers. Helped validate user profile and uncover usability issues with design UI and flows.
User study findings and recommendations - I facilitated and the UI designer took notes during the session. We compiled notes and trends after each session to speed up analysis and discussion of next steps.
User study - screenshots from prototype used in study. Participants found some of the text to be small and didn't notice the action buttons right away.
