Crosby POS Redesign

Product Design · 2023

Crosby POS Redesign

Redesigning the retail point-of-sale experience across mobile and in-store platforms — cutting average transaction time in half.

Company

Crosby

Role

Lead Product Designer

Year

2023

Platform

iOS · Web

Category

Product Design

The Challenge

Crosby's legacy point-of-sale system had not seen a major design overhaul since 2015. Checkout clerks struggled with a cluttered interface, averaging 4.2 minutes per transaction — nearly double the industry benchmark.

Our goal was to reduce checkout friction, modernise the visual language across touchpoints, and improve the experience for both staff and customers — without disrupting business continuity across 80+ store locations.

Research and discovery workshop with the Crosby team
Discovery sprint — stakeholder workshop, Crosby HQ, San Francisco

Discovery & Research

I led a two-week discovery sprint to understand the problem space before touching any pixels. The research included:

  • 12 in-store observation sessions across 4 store locations
  • Stakeholder interviews with 8 department leads and 20 frontline staff
  • Competitive analysis of 6 major POS platforms on the market
  • Heuristic evaluation of the existing system against Nielsen's 10 principles
Affinity mapping and synthesis of user research findings
Early wireframe explorations for the new POS interface

Key Insights

After synthesising over 200 friction points into themes, three critical insights shaped our entire design direction:

  1. Navigation complexity — clerks performed an average of 22 taps per transaction due to deeply nested menus
  2. Visual hierarchy failure — the action button and total amount were not visually prominent, causing frequent mis-taps
  3. No contextual feedback — the system provided no confirmation states, leading to repeated accidental double-entries

“I spend half my shift just trying to find the right button. It's faster to do the mental math myself than wait for the screen to catch up.”

— Sarah, Senior Checkout Clerk — Crosby, Mission District

The Solution

We rebuilt the POS interface from the ground up around a single guiding principle: every common action should be reachable in two taps or fewer.

The redesigned system introduced a persistent quick-action rail, contextual smart defaults, and a high-contrast visual hierarchy that reduced cognitive load during peak-hour rushes.

Final Crosby POS interface on iPad Pro
Final design — Crosby POS on iPad Pro, iOS 17

Outcomes

The redesigned system launched across all 80 Crosby locations in Q4 2023. Within 90 days:

  • Average transaction time dropped from 4.2 min → 2.1 min
  • Staff error rate reduced by 67%
  • Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) improved by 22 points
  • Onboarding time for new clerks cut from 3 days to 4 hours