Toast

Toast is a POS system for restaurants.
After being invited to the Toast warehouse and seeing some hardware shipment issues... I rethink their system in a way that gives both the customer and Toast a piece of mind when it comes to making sure all of the customer's hardware has been shipped and will be ready for the day of install

Toast

My roles

UX Designer, UI Designer, Researcher

The Warehouse

I was invited to the Toast warehouse to take a look at their production to see where there could be improvements in their system. While I was there I found a few problems with their shipping and customers loosing packages.

Left picture: a fulfilled order with over 20 small miscellaneous boxes.

Right picture: The small boxes that could be used when parts aren’t pre-packaged in boxes from the manufacturer.

They were using miscellaneous boxes for shipments and many of the shipments contained over 20 items per box, and that can be confusing without proper labeling. One quote the guide said stuck with me he said “sometimes we have customers loosing pieces of hardware because they can get separated from the other boxes and we have to ship them again.”

A single order can contain 25 (or more) individual pieces.
Some things such as the monitors, and registers are all sent in manufacturers boxes, no labels are on the outside of the box to identify it as a Toast product.
Miscellaneous boxes are used when the toast boxes either don’t fit or are in low stock.
Instructions / setup manuals are rare, only a few items have instructions.

Some things such as the monitors, and registers are all sent in manufacturers boxes, no labels are on the outside of the box to identify it as a Toast product.

Instructions / setup manuals are rare, only a few items have instructions.

The Problem

Customers of Toast have experienced some confusion when it comes to receiving shipments of hardware because of the lack of labeling and the use of miscellaneous boxes. Keeping everything organized and together for the day of install can be tricky.

Needs

Toast / Toast Employee’s needs:

Production that is cost effective.
Keep it simple enough to speed up production.

Restaurant owner’s needs:

Easy to set up and installation.
Customer service available when necessary

Goal

Create a system where the customer knows exactly what they’re receiving and what items go together, so they are confident to do the install on their own, or with little help from Toast. Some solutions are using color-coding to tell what boxes go with other boxes, or having stickers on the boxes labeling them with what is inside.

Competitive Analysis

Amazon does packaging well. They have their simple logo on the sides of the box with tape that has their name on it. It is clear that this is from Amazon.

Square has one box that depicts what is inside, along with some illustrations to make it more relatable to their customers on a personal level. Their system is a lot more compact than Toast systems and can easily fit into one box. Although it is an option to get inspiration from, I don’t see this as a feasible or cost effective option for every piece of equipment for Toast

Ideation

I needed to come up with a solution that made sure the customer received all of their hardware, and allowed them a way to keep it all organized. These needed to be easy to understand, intuitive, simple, and time saving for both the customer and /toast.

Concepts

I thought of these concepts on a scale of no tech to high tech. I also took into consideration how costly these processes would be to implement into Toasts existing production.

The no tech options are:

A paper check list in the box.
1. This would be the most cost effective solution for Toast to implement.
Stickers on the box in different shapes and colors, this would be used to mark the different parts of the POS system. For example the printer parts boxes would be labeled with a blue star.
1. The colored stickers in different shapes also allow visually impaired people such as people that are color blind to use this system.

The high tech option is:

Building an app that allows the customer to use their phone’s camera to scan labels on the boxes. These labels would be used to check off each item as they go through the boxes.
1. This would allow Toast to track if the item actually got to the customer.
  This option could be used in unison with the paper check list for the customers that would prefer to keep things low tech.
  This is the most expensive option.

I chose to create the high tech option.

Physical box prototype

I presented this prototype to Toast, I needed a physical box to demonstrate how this would be done within this new app feature. I printed a custom QR code, and connected that QR code to my prototype of the app. The Toast logo and the contents details were printed on brown paper to make it appear as if it was printed directly on the box.

Prototype of the app

Each delivery is a big box that contains multiple little boxes. Each large box will be logged and its contents would be in an inventory list below.

Scanning each box will automatically check the contents of the box off of an inventory list. Toast and the user will be able to tell right away if they are missing anything. The user can report an issue with their delivery if they are missing anything they need.