Designing the Future of Retail Checkout
Staff Product Designer · 2022
Point of Sale service and design system creation for a national retailer. Our team transformed JCPenney's point of sale software, hardware, and network infrastructure supporting a mobile-first checkout experience launched across 650+ stores.
Understanding 86 Ways to Do a Job
Field research surfaced consistent patterns where small interaction failures were compounding into significant operational drag.
- Do This Every Time
Rewards prompts fired before cashiers finished scanning items - Can't Go Back
Tender selection entered associates into a forced flow navigation - Do it My Own Way
Most associates defaulted to manual entry and workarounds
For associates, this was business as usual. There were measurable downstream effects. Longer transaction times, increased audit exposure, and degraded customer experience at the register.
New Point of Sale, Familiar Goals
Faster Checkout Flow
We should remove interruptions and irreversible steps to keep transactions moving without restarts.
Error-Proof Tendering
The tendering flow should prevent mistakes instead of punishing them.
Reliable Daily Close
Streamline end-of-day reconciliation to reduce errors and manager overhead.
Mobile-First Selling
Enable associates to complete full transactions on the floor without returning to the register.
System Trust & Stability
Reduce system crashes and slow-downs that erode associate confidence.
A Scalable, System-Aligned POS Platform
JCPenney needed a design system to power mobile checkout, complex retail workflows, and future in-store products.
I built the design system and point of sale application in Figma from the ground up, tokens to page components.
This became the foundation of JCPenney's digital products. UX leadership at JCP highlighted its depth, responsiveness, and technical rigor calling out how seamlessly it integrated the brand, system logic, and future product needs.
Meeting Customers Where They Are
Associates need to complete fast transactions on the sales floor and migrate to the register if additional hardware is needed.
The point of sale experience was designed specifically to transition between contexts. This reduced transaction time, and avoided restarts, and cancellations. These metrics directly support checkout KPIs and minimize audit-triggering patterns.
Reflection
This project reinforced the value of research serving as the connective tissue between a business, its systems, and its users. The 86 jobs-to-be-done became a shared language that guided priorities, tradeoffs, and success metrics across teams.
Starting a design system with a specific use case in mind drove clarity around what components needed to do. We were able to design with components that represented real system and business objects.
Client Feedback
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
