About the Project

In Starbucks stores, employees often need to locate and reprint receipts for customers after a transaction has already been completed. The current POS system makes this process harder than it should be, requiring employees to navigate through multiple steps and screens to find past purchases. This project explores how the receipt lookup experience could be redesigned to make finding and reprinting past transactions faster and more intuitive for store employees.

Role
User Experience Designer

Overview
Redesigning the Starbucks POS receipt system to make it easier for employees to find and reprint past transactions.

CONTEXT

Timeline
6 Weeks, Winter 2026

The problem:

Starbucks baristas experience difficulty locating receipts quickly and efficiently within the POS system .

This is a problem because poor information architecture, excessive navigation steps, and restricted access to mobile receipts slow service speed, increase stress, and disrupt operations.

The goal:

Redesign the POS receipt experience to reduce receipt retrieval time, improve organization, and enable appropriate access to mobile receipts.

How might wes:

  • Reduce average receipt retrieval time

  • Reduce reliance on shift leaders for mobile receipt access

  • Reduce number of taps required to access receipts

  • Improve employee satisfaction (qualitative feedback)

The Problem

The Goal

Problem

  1. Context (high-speed environment)

  2. User Pain Points (baristas & shift leaders)

  3. Constraints (security, role permissions)

  4. Research (interviews with coworkers)

  5. Information Architecture Redesign

  6. Wireframes

  7. Prototype

  8. Usability Testing

  9. Results / Reflections

Help patients check in before their visit so appointments start faster and lines stay short.

"How Might We’s"

  • How might we help patients complete check in before arriving?

  • How might we design check-in for patients who aren’t tech-savvy?

  • How might we support first time and multilingual patients?

  • How might we reduce repeated data entry for returning patients?

Preview

Let’s see how I got here 👇🏻

The Problem(s)

Starbucks employees occasionally need to locate and reprint receipts for customers after a transaction has already been completed. These requests can happen for a variety of reasons, such as returns, expense tracking, or when a customer simply forgot to ask for a receipt. During busy store hours, employees need to resolve these requests quickly without disrupting the checkout process.

Getting Started

Understanding the User

On approaching this problem, it was important to gain a better understanding of how Starbucks employees interact with the POS system when locating and reprinting receipts. I conducted 6 interviews with Starbucks employees who regularly work at the register.

The goals were to:

  • Understand when and why employees need to locate past receipts

  • Learn how employees currently search for and reprint past transactions

  • Identify pain points in the current receipt lookup workflow and uncover opportunities for improvement

Affinity Diagram

After completing the user interviews, I organized the observations into an affinity diagram to identify patterns and recurring challenges in the receipt lookup experience. Through this process, it became clear that employees often struggle to quickly locate past transactions due to limited search options, interruptions to the checkout workflow, and the time pressure of busy store environments.

Digital Version of Affinity Diagram

User Research & Understanding

Key Insights

  1. Receipt lookup interrupts the checkout workflow
    Employees must navigate away from the main POS interface and move through multiple menus to find past transactions, slowing down service.

  2. Transactions are difficult to locate with limited information
    Customers often do not remember exact purchase details, making it harder for employees to identify the correct transaction.

  3. Busy store environments increase pressure
    Receipt requests frequently occur during peak hours, when employees feel rushed and need to resolve issues quickly.

  4. Employees need faster access to transaction history
    Baristas want a simple way to quickly locate and reprint receipts without interrupting the checkout process.

User Research & Understanding Takeaways

PERSONAS

Empathizing with the Target Users

To better understand the target users, I created fictitious personas so that I can jump into the users' shoes and truly understand their needs, wants, thoughts, and priorities. These personas helped guide the redesign by focusing on employee goals, frustrations, and workflow needs.

BRAINSTORMING

Exploring Solution(s)

Based on insights from user interviews and affinity mapping, 3 key opportunities emerged to improve the receipt lookup experience.

1. Transaction Filters

Introduce more useful filters that allow employees to quickly narrow down results. Improved filters include: today, time range, custom date, payment method, and order type. These new filters create clear and scannable transaction lists that make it easy to identify orders quickly.

The Previous and Next buttons were moved to a more visible location within the interface. Placing the buttons in a more prominent location improves visibility and allows baristas to quickly navigate between transaction pages without scrolling through long lists of orders.

Current filter UI

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Redesigned filter UI

Low-Fidelity Prototypes

1. Transaction Filters

Introduce more useful filters that allow employees to quickly narrow down results. Improved filters include: today, time range, custom date, payment method, and order type. These new filters create clear and scannable transaction lists that make it easy to identify orders quickly.

The Previous and Next buttons were moved to a more visible location within the interface. Placing the buttons in a more prominent location improves visibility and allows baristas to quickly navigate between transaction pages without scrolling through long lists of orders.