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Product22 Mar 20266 min read
Why we built our POS for cashiers, not engineers
Most POS systems optimise back-office reporting. Ours optimises for the tired person at the terminal at 9pm on a Friday. Here's how that single decision shaped the whole product.
Dasvio Team
Product & operations
The POS purchase decision is usually made by the owner, but a cashier uses that screen eight hours a day. The gap between purchase criteria and usage criteria explains most of the bad POS experience in this industry.
Design rules change during the rush
- Targets have to be large — a tired, hurried finger does not tap precisely.
- Confirmation dialogs belong only on irreversible actions; unnecessary confirmation breeds blindness.
- Colour alone must not carry information; low contrast is unreadable under kitchen lighting.
- Undoing a mistap has to take one step.
- No critical flow should require scrolling.
Features we removed
Some of the decisions that improved the product were subtractions, not additions. We took the detailed product description, the stock-level indicator and the customer-history panel off the cashier screen. All three were useful information — and all three were noise during the rush. They all still live on the manager screen.
The less there is on screen, the faster the cashier works. Simplification meets "we're missing information" complaints in week one; by week two nobody wants it back.
Our design targets
-3s
target: time won per transaction
-40%
target: voids caused by mis-entry
1 day
target: ramp time for new staff
POSUXDesign
