- ·roleUX Designer
- ·year2024
- ·duration10 weeks
- ·team4 designers
- ·toolsFigma
A fresh take on Toast POS
Looking at where a widely-adopted POS quietly falls apart on a Friday rush, and what it would take to fix it.
- ·3 in-person interviews
- ·4 competitors analyzed
- ·1 redesign
01 · Overview
Toast is a restaurant management platform designed to streamline operations and improve the daily workflows of food service businesses.
This redesign focuses on simplifying order management, enhancing payments, and optimizing team collaboration in fast-paced restaurant environments.
02 · The Problem
In a post-pandemic world where contactless payments are the norm, modern businesses need tools that adapt to evolving technology and customer expectations.
Toast is widely adopted in the food and beverage space, but despite its success, it still has notable usability gaps — especially under pressure.
03 · Current State
Our redesign should focus on the strengths Toast already has
- Being restaurant-focused — making things easier for owners and employees
- Refine order management, kitchen display systems, and analytics
- Improve onboarding, navigation, and user flow to make Toast more intuitive
04 · Research
What does the market look like?
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.
We conducted in-person interviews with three San Diego based food and drink businesses.
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.
A boba tea shop founded by two second-generation Asian Americans that focuses on quality ingredients and simple execution in San Diego.
A passion project made by a group of friends featuring pop-up matcha lattes and a live DJ in local community spaces.
82%Had a POS issue in the last two weeks
2 of 3Only take contactless payment
77%Wished for better order organization
Here's what they had to say
The software issues — the gift cards module got eliminated so we 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.
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.
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.
05 · Personas
Based on interviews and insights, here are the personas that shaped the design strategy.
06 · Process
Lo-fi · off to the drawing board
These are our initial low-fidelity prototypes, created before gathering feedback from stakeholders. While they were still rough, they provided a strong foundational framework to explore potential solutions and refine our approach.
Mid-fi · let's leave that in the oven a bit longer
These are the mid-fidelity prototypes we created after testing our prior prototype with our stakeholders.
07 · Introducing the New Toast system
The new tab feature allows employees to customize the POS for present issues. The line cook's view doesn't look like the host's: faster, fewer mis-taps, less training.
- tools
- Figma
- platform
- iPad POS · Web admin
- status
- Concept · academic
- team
- Zander Vilaysane, Ashley Nguyen, Alexa Citra
- partners
- Friends Of Friends · Camelia Rd · Mix + Matcha
Notes
I enjoyed interviewing the business owners to understand real-world challenges and designing practical solutions that streamlined their entire operation. Thanks to Zander Vilaysane, Ashley Nguyen, and Alexa Citra, and to Friends Of Friends, Camelia Rd, and Mix + Matcha for making this project possible.