A bold new reimagination of the Toast POS
Toast is a restaurant management service that helps businesses streamline operations.
This redesign of the Toast POS enhances that process, making order management, payments, and workflows more intuitive and efficient for restaurant teams.
Rethinking Toast POS to improve speed and clarity in busy kitchens.🍞
We interviewed 3 different local businesses
Friends Of Friends
A coffeeshop based in National City. With a focus on creating drinks based on their Filipino heritage— they seek to create a space that brings the community together through food, drinks, and live music
Camelia RD Tea Bar
A boba tea shop founded by two second-generation Asian Americans that focuses on quality ingredients and simple execution in San Diego.
Mix + Matcha
A passion project made by a group of friends featuring pop-up matcha lattes and a live DJ in local community spaces.
We conducted in-person interviews to get their general thoughts on daily operations and POS systems
82%
Reported they had issues with their POS within the last two weeks
Reported they wish they had better order organization
77%
Only take contactless payments
2/3
And here’s what they had to say about their POS experiences
“The POS is annoying, Toast is a great company and they are getting better slowly. Like having opened tabs and eliminating individual items."
- Friends Of Friends
“The software issues, gift cards module got eliminated so couldn't sell or redeem for over a week, there was no reason why or fix, and I had to have multiple long phone calls with Toast."
- Friends Of Friends
“Square has frequent updating to ensure the system is compatible, and sometimes it won’t even connect to the wi-fi. The Reader used to have issues, but they were mostly resolved after they consolidated with one system"
- Camelia Rd
“We used a Square POS on an iPad, and within a few minutes it stopped working, so we switched to the iPhone tap to pay, and the iPad did not work for the next 3 hours."
- Mix + Matcha
Lets look at the market
To better understand the market landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation.
We conducted a competitive analysis of four major POS and e-commerce platforms: Square, Clover, Shopify, and Toast. This analysis helped pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and areas for innovation.
Low-fidelity Prototype
To the drawing board!
What Do Our Stakeholder's Think?
After developing our first prototype, we reconvened with stakeholders to ensure we were accurately addressing their needs. Based on their feedback, we incorporated additional features to better align with their expectations:
The new tab feature allows for employees to customize the POS to allow for efficiency for any present issues.
We also introduced an AI feature that helps business owners get help on reaching financial goals!
A new analytics page can be viewed from the POS with administrator credentials to allow for instant changes to make sure profits are efficient throughout the day.
Tab system (allows for adding/subtracting)
Emphasis on business’s ability to view metrics in live time without having to go on a computer
A freshly baked user-interface
The tab deletion feature also allows for the removal of certain tabs if they are no longer needed to avoid cluttering.
Need an extra chef?
Staying organized
What's the big deal?
In a post-pandemic world, where most transactions are done through contactless payment. To stay competitive, businesses will need things that will allow them to take these forms of payment.
Notably, the Toast POS is one brand that stands out due to its popularity. However, despite it's popularity — it's not perfect.
Well, what does it look like currently?
Enough of what we think…
What do the businesses think?
Based on interviews and insights, here are the personas that shaped the design strategy.
Mark - "The Overwhelmed Owner"
Erika - "The Frustrated Regular"
What did this teach us?
Our redesign should aim to focus on the strengths that Toast currently has, such as:
Being a Restaurant-focused tools—making things easier for owner and employees
Refine order management, kitchen display systems, and analytics.
Enhancing usability, Improve onboarding, navigation, and user flow to make Toast more intuitive.
Why These Designs?
These are our initial low-fidelity prototypes, created before gathering feedback from stakeholders.
While they are still rough, they provided a strong foundational framework to explore potential solutions and refine our approach to addressing the problem.
Mid-fidelity Upgrade
Designing For Real People
This dish is ready to serve…
Introducing the new Toast POS
