Redesigning the point-of-sale system used by thousands of team members across 700+ stores and relied on for millions of transactions every year.
ROLE
Experience Design Lead
TIMELINE
2024 - 2026
SCOPE
End-to-end UX, CX, Service Design, Operations
ROLE
99% of transactions. Every second matters.
At 7-Eleven Australia, the POS handles 99% of in-store transactions, so every second at the counter matters. After more than 20 years on a dependable but heavily vendor-gated NCR platform, where even small enhancements could take 12–18 months to ship, the business transitioned to a new POS solution to unlock speed, flexibility, and long-term cost reduction.
As Experience Design Lead, I drove end-to-end UX and product design from research and synthesis through to prototyping, testing, and final delivery partnering across CX, service design, engineering, and solution architects across multiple regions around the globe.
RESEARCH
Defining the right POS, not just a new one
Before designing anything, I introduced a research-driven process to ensure every decision was grounded in real store behaviour, not assumptions. This combined:
Service safaris observing live transactions in real conditions
Store visits across metro and regional Victoria
Contextual interviews with store teams and support staff
Observational shadowing during full staff shifts
Usability testing of early interface prototypes
Video footage analysis using Attention Insight to identify UI hotspots
12
Store visits
24
Store visits
16
Second avergae transaction time
Some of the questions I asked included:
How do staff navigate high-pressure scenarios during peak periods?
Where do errors occur, and how are they currently resolved?
How do different roles (team members, managers, field staff) use the system differently?
What mental models have formed after 25 years with the legacy POS?
How might changes to workflows affect speed, accuracy, and confidence?
I also formed early hypotheses to guide our inquiry:
Staff rely on pattern recognition and muscle memory, not interface text
Error recovery is a major friction source in daily operations
Improving clarity at each step matters more than reducing the number of steps
The existing POS, known informally as OldPOS with Attention Insight heat mapping. Focus score: 44 - analysis: Not great!
Attention Insight validated what interviews suggested: attention was concentrated in a small, dense area of the screen, and the surrounding UI was largely invisible to staff under load. We analysed core and edge use cases and defined a behavioural baseline for each major function.
IN-STORE REALITY
The people behind (almost) every transaction
In-store visits surfaced something that research alone couldn't: the sheer cognitive load store staff were managing every shift. While spending up to 90% of their time at the POS, they were simultaneously expected to monitor as many as five separate devices, eCommerce orders, food and beverage temperatures, fuel forecourt activity, and more.
90%
Of shift spent at POS
5
Devices to monitor simultaneously
ARCHETYPES
Six ways people actually use the POS
Across 12 store visits and 24 interviews, we identified six core team-member archetypes. Research revealed that staff operate under heavy cognitive pressure within a surprisingly complex ecosystem of tools, relying heavily on learned workarounds, word-of-mouth training, and muscle memory to keep transactions moving.
Rather than enabling staff, the existing system demanded extra mental effort just to complete routine tasks. The opportunity was clear: build a POS that reduces that mental effort, not one that just looks different.
Dozens of hours of interview and contextual interview video and audio.
THE VISION
An experience vision to anchor every decision
From synthesis, we defined a single experience north star and five design pillars - a shared reference point for the entire program, across design, engineering, and vendor partners.
EXPERIENCE NORTH STAR
CONSTRAINTS
WinFORMS - a constrained canvas
As we moved from synthesis into UX mapping and wireframing, a significant constraint emerged: the chosen platform relied on a highly constrained transactional architecture based on WinFORMS, where every interaction was processed sequentially through an operator display limited to two lines of 20 characters each.
DESIGN
First we define, then we design
This product sits at the intersection of eCommerce interface patterns and traditional POS design - a space that required careful UX strategy to serve a genuinely hybrid retail environment. I designed and led two versions of the product across a complex stakeholder landscape spanning vendors, compliance teams, engineers, and partners across multiple regions.
DESIGN
First we define, then we design
This product sits at the intersection of eCommerce interface patterns and traditional POS design - a space that required careful UX strategy to serve a genuinely hybrid retail environment. I designed and led two versions of the product across a complex stakeholder landscape spanning vendors, compliance teams, engineers, and partners across multiple regions.
