Food Service POS Project
Student project for User Centered Design Class. Research, ideation, and prototype of a new point of sale system for quick service restaurants and coffee shops.
Year
2026
Introduction
This project was for an Introduction to User-Centered Design class in my master’s program and completed with a team of five people altogether. We chose the domain of food service and went through the entire design cycle in an attempt to design a system that would better serve food service employees than what they already have access to.
Research
Our team conducted ten semi-structured interviews with people we knew who either currently or previously worked in the food service industry. We met and went over the data that we collected to identify personas that could be extracted from the overall picture that we created. We came up with four personas that we were designing for, including a line cook, a barista, a caterer, and a store manager.
Prototyping
These findings led to unique features that we added to our design, including a recipes tab, for quick service employees to use when they are interrupted and don’t remember exactly which step they left off on. We also implemented a reminder system that would make use of popups on screens to remind employees of certain tasks or orders after an allotted amount of time had passed without action being taken, such as an order being submitted to the system or being marked as complete. We did usability testing with our mid-fidelity prototypes, but were unable to come to any conclusions about the features we created, due to problems with fidelity during the testing. Pictured here is a prototype redesign at a higher fidelity which would allow for successful usability testing
Key Takeaways
I came away from this project having learned a lot about the design process as a whole. I had never gone through the entire process with one project before and being able to do that was very valuable, as it allowed me to see how one part of the process flows into another. I also came away with a better understanding of how team-based design works and how time limits can prevent iteration and improvement. If I had more time on this project, I would have made refinements based on the usability testing we conducted and iterated upon those tests with more context and better design.