Point of Sale Modernization · Senior UX Designer · 2022
$6.2M
Hardware savings
86
Workflows redesigned
31+
Stores launched
4 mo
Research to handoff
Led UI design and design system creation for a national retailer's complete POS overhaul, from 20-year-old registers to mobile-first checkout across 650+ stores. Mobile-first checkout now enables floor-based selling, faster credit approvals, and a unified omnichannel experience.
Tethered Legacy Hardware
Outdated hardware keeps associates stuck at fixed registers with no mobile checkout options. This limits flexibility on the sales floor and slows down busy moments when speed matters most.
Fragmented Commerce
In-store and online checkout don't connect well. Payments run through separate systems, and customer data lives in different databases, creating a fragmented experience across channels.
High-Friction Credit Flow
The store credit card application process is slow and cumbersome. Customers often wait for approvals before they can complete a purchase, which leads to long lines and unnecessary friction.
Senior Product Designer
The platform served multiple operational roles across the store. Personas for each role was grounded in research-validated behaviors and emotional needs. I wanted to capture what users did alongside the pressure, trust, and accountability they carried into every transaction.
Cashiers
Supervisors
Back Office Managers
Specialty Associates
Store Operations Leadership
Cashier Priorities
Executing high-volume transactions under speed and accuracy demands, where system crashes or irreversible actions directly impacted customer wait times and audit risk.
Impact
Field research surfaced a pattern where small interaction failures were compounding into significant operational drag. Rewards prompts fired before cashiers finished scanning, breaking their flow. Tender selection was linear and unforgiving, so one wrong tap meant voiding the transaction entirely. Return lookups were brittle enough that most associates defaulted to manual entry.
These weren't outliers. They were the normal state of the system under real conditions, and they had measurable downstream effects. Longer transaction times, increased audit exposure, and degraded customer experience at the register.
Contextual Inquiry
We observed real transactions in-store to capture authentic workflows, friction points, and associate workarounds—revealing where the legacy POS system consistently failed to support day-to-day operations.
AI Insight Synthesis
AI-assisted transcript synthesis surfaced recurring behavioral patterns, while early assumption mapping aligned stakeholders on key risks and unknowns.
Workshops
Cross-functional workshops identified 86 core associate jobs across 13 operational categories, creating a shared research foundation that drove product priorities.
JCPenney needed more than redesigned screens. They needed a UI foundation capable of powering mobile checkout, complex retail workflows, and future in-store products.
I built a complete, system-aligned design layer from tokens through application components, giving the organization a flexible platform they could own, extend, and scale.
A token-driven structure mapped typography, color, and spacing into responsive primitives and reusable components. Everything was designed to adapt seamlessly between handheld mobile checkout and docked terminals.
The design system became the foundation of JCPenney's next-generation POS platform, enabling rapid iteration, clearer engineering handoff, and long-term scalability.
Internal UX leadership highlighted its depth, responsiveness, and technical rigor. They called out how seamlessly it integrated brand, system logic, and future product needs.
Rather than split the POS into separate mobile and terminal experiences, I designed a single responsive system that adapted seamlessly between handheld floor use and docked checkout—supporting fast transactions on the sales floor and complex operations at the register.
The responsive mobile-to-dock experience was designed specifically to reduce restarts, cancellations, and transaction time, directly supporting our checkout KPIs and minimizing audit-triggering cancellation patterns.
To operationalize insights across 86 workflows, I built a reusable journey mapping system in Figma that standardized current and future state documentation, turning research into clear development priorities.
Using the ORCA object model, the UI was structured directly around core business entities like Customer, Transaction, and Tender—creating immediate clarity for engineering and reducing integration friction during handoff.
Business Impact
Customer & Associate Experience
Operational Impact
Organizational Enablement
This project reinforced the value of research as infrastructure. The 86 jobs-to-be-done became a shared language that guided priorities, tradeoffs, and success metrics across teams.
Building the design system solo under tight timelines forced ruthless clarity around what components truly needed to do. Every variant and behavior had to directly support real workflows.
Most importantly, I learned how to run cross-functional workshops that respected stakeholder time while producing actionable outcomes. Preparation, clear structure, and follow-through turned complex collaboration into real momentum.
Kitestring was a strategic partner in shaping JCPenney's next-generation store technology, modernizing both checkout systems and the customer and associate experience. Their strong UI/UX capabilities drove major improvements in core checkout workflows and specialty areas like Jewelry and Salon, helping bring our transformation roadmap to life.
— Irfan Butt, Director, JCPenney
I'm looking for my next role building teams and shaping product strategy. If you need a design leader who ships measurable outcomes, let's talk.
Available for full-time roles