UrbanPiper POS Redesign
Led the end-to-end redesign of the POS platform used by 32,000+ restaurants across 4+ countries — from user research and stakeholder alignment to a 3-phase rollout that improved CSAT by ~17.4% and reduced onboarding time by ~30%.
Context & Business Problem
UrbanPiper's POS and restaurant management dashboard was the daily operating system for tens of thousands of restaurant operators — processing over $500M in GMV. When I joined, the product was already dominant in India. But the company was expanding globally, and that expansion exposed a critical gap.
As UrbanPiper expanded internationally, internal teams and merchant feedback confirmed what was becoming obvious: our UX wasn't competitive on a global stage. Competitors in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe had more polished, intuitive products. Even domestically, competitors like Petpooja were closing the design gap. Retention rates were dropping. This wasn't a cosmetic refresh — it was a strategic necessity to protect global growth.
The core challenges were interconnected:
- Low-tech users operating under pressure — restaurant staff with limited tech literacy needed to move fast during lunch-rush peaks. Every extra click cost money.
- Legacy interface that hadn't scaled — the UI had grown organically over years. No design system. Inconsistent patterns. Visual debt everywhere.
- Multi-country, multi-device deployment — the redesign had to work on desktop, tablet, and POS hardware across 4+ markets with different workflows.
- Engineering bandwidth was split — the engineering team was simultaneously working on other high-priority features. Any redesign had to be pragmatic about what could ship when.
Discovery & Research
I started by mapping the full problem space — not jumping to solutions. The research phase combined quantitative data with deep qualitative understanding.
Stakeholder Interviews
I ran structured interviews with product managers, engineering managers, the support team, and sales. The cross-functional input was critical: support knew where merchants struggled most, sales knew where we lost deals to competitors, and engineering knew what was technically feasible to change.
During cross-functional discussions, a consistent theme emerged: UrbanPiper's UX was not competitive at a global level. Teams across PM, engineering, and sales independently confirmed that our interface felt dated compared to international competitors — and this perception was directly impacting expansion conversations.
On-Site Merchant Testing
I didn't rely on remote surveys. I went to merchant locations — physically sitting with restaurant operators, walking them through a live prototype, and watching them interact with the product under real conditions. The reactions were immediate and honest in a way that no remote test captures.
This photo is from one of those sessions — I brought a working prototype to the merchant's location and walked them through the new flows. Their reactions, confusion points, and "oh that's so much better" moments became the primary data that shaped every subsequent design decision.
Research Synthesis
Strategic Approach
Given the engineering constraints and the scale of the product (32k+ restaurants can't all break at once), I proposed a phased approach. The key insight: not every improvement requires a flow change. Some of the highest-impact wins were purely visual.
I worked directly with product managers to define the scope of each phase, and with engineering managers to negotiate what could realistically ship given sprint bandwidth. This wasn't a waterfall handoff — it was continuous negotiation and prioritization.
"If this sprint is busy, just ship colors and typography." — That was the pitch I made to stakeholders. By decomposing the redesign into layers of increasing complexity, I made it possible for engineering to contribute even when their bandwidth was allocated elsewhere. This pragmatic approach was what got buy-in across all teams.
Phased Rollout
The redesign was executed in three deliberate phases — each designed to deliver visible value while minimizing disruption to merchants and engineering teams.
Stakeholder Collaboration & Pushback
This wasn't a project where everyone agreed from day one. There was real pushback — from engineering teams concerned about bandwidth, from PMs with competing priorities, and from stakeholders skeptical about the ROI of a visual refresh. Building consensus was as much a part of my job as pushing pixels.
The feedback loop that made this work: test with merchants on-site → bring data back to internal stakeholders → modify designs based on combined merchant + stakeholder input → repeat. This cycle turned skeptics into advocates because the evidence was tangible, not theoretical.
Design Decisions & Tradeoffs
What I Chose — and Why
- Progressive enhancement over big-bang redesign — a full redesign would have been cleaner, but the risk to 32k merchants was too high. The phased approach reduced risk and built internal confidence incrementally.
- Accessibility for low-literacy users — larger touch targets, high-contrast color palette, icon-first navigation. Restaurant staff aren't tech workers — the interface needed to be usable by someone who's never touched a SaaS product.
- Hardware-aware design — the redesign wasn't just "desktop responsive." It was tested on the specific POS terminals and tablets that merchants actually use — devices with lower resolution, smaller screens, and sometimes spotty connectivity.
- Design system as infrastructure, not an afterthought — I built the design system in parallel with the redesign, not after it. This meant Phase 2 components were already documented and reusable by the time other teams needed them.
What I Deliberately Left Out
- No gamification — the product needed to be faster, not more engaging. Restaurant operators don't want to be "delighted" — they want to close orders and move to the next table.
- No dark mode (yet) — despite personal preference, the data didn't support it. Merchants worked in well-lit restaurant environments. Dark mode would have added complexity without clear user benefit.
Before & After
Scalable Design System
Before the redesign, there was no unified design system. Each team had its own patterns, colors, and component styles — leading to a fragmented user experience across the platform.
I built a comprehensive design system from scratch — design tokens, atomic components (buttons, inputs, cards, modals), spacing scales, and an accessibility-compliant color palette. The architecture followed a tokens → atoms → molecules → organisms model, documented thoroughly enough that engineers could self-serve without design involvement for routine UI work.
The real measure of a design system's success isn't how it looks — it's adoption. 5 different product teams across UrbanPiper adopted the system, creating visual and interaction consistency across the entire platform for the first time.
Redesign Walkthrough
Results
Reflections
This project taught me that the hardest part of a large-scale redesign isn't the design — it's the organizational alignment. Getting 5 product teams, multiple engineering managers, and a diverse merchant base to move in the same direction requires a different skill set than visual design. It requires negotiation, evidence-based persuasion, and the pragmatism to meet people where they are.
If I could do one thing differently, I would have started the design system documentation even earlier — before Phase 1. The system emerged organically from the redesign, which was natural but meant some early decisions had to be refactored once the system took shape.
The phased approach was unconventional but proved its value: it turned a potentially adversarial "you're changing everything" moment into a series of collaborative wins that built trust over time.
