DynaKey
1991-1996
NCR Retail Division - Human Factors
Across retail, hospitality, and other similar industries, point-of-sale (POS) systems were growing in features, but limited by hardware and poor UI paradigms that could not scale well. Systems increased in keyboard sizes, hardware footprint, complexity, user errors, training time, and transaction times. I was part of a small three person design team that grew as our new POS concept and prototypes began attracting attention from major retailers.
GOALS:
- Change the retail POS paradigm and create a new and revolutionary POS system
- Overcome existing point-of-sale (POS) limitations and issues
ACTIONS:
- Conducted field observations and interviews, time-motion studies, benchmarking, SWOT analysisExplored concepts and new paradigms / models
- Created information architectures, interaction designs, wireframes, and storyboards (6 screen templates served as UI foundation for over 100 UI screens)
- Created a fully interactive prototype with over 26K lines of code
- Used it to run comparitive user performance tests against incumbent systems and show the needed ROI
- Integrated latest prods & technologies: Voice recognition, fruit & vegetable laser “scanning”, SmartCards, barcode printed on receipt for returns, digital signature capture, etc.
- Informed and guided hardware prototyping and visual design
- Performed usability studies and design iteration / refinement
- Documented style guides and unique cashier’s manual teaching strategy not key-strokes
RESULTS:
- DynaKey: One of NCR’s best selling retail POS systems; over 300,000 sold over 5 years (huge for retail POS)
- Reduced training time up to 50%
- Increased cashier productivity by 10%
- Raised the bar for the entire industry
- DynaKey was a huge success, continues to evolve to this day, and is probably being used in a store near you