Redesigning the technician-facing POS system for one of North America's largest quick-lube chains — turning a friction-heavy checkout experience into a tool technicians actually want to use.
01 — CHALLENGE
Jiffy Lube's existing POS system was a legacy Windows-based application that hadn't been substantially updated in over a decade. Technicians working in a high-throughput, time-pressured environment — with oil on their gloves and a customer waiting in a lobby — were expected to navigate a complex menu system to complete service records, upsell additional services, and process transactions. The interface was designed for keyboard and mouse operation, while the service bay reality required quick, glanceable interactions with minimal cognitive load.
Beyond the usability issues, the system had significant impact on Jiffy Lube's revenue performance. Studies showed that the complexity of the upsell and add-on service workflow was directly suppressing service attachment rates. Technicians were skipping or rushing through the recommended services screen because it was too cumbersome to present to customers while also managing the service itself. The business case was clear: a better POS was a meaningful revenue lever, not just an employee experience improvement.
"I know I'm supposed to offer the wiper blades and the air filter but by the time I've found them in the system the customer is ready to leave."— Jiffy Lube Technician, Research Interview
02 — RESEARCH
We couldn't understand this problem from a conference room. We spent time in service bays across eight locations, watching technicians work real customers through the full service and checkout flow. This on-location research revealed that the physical and cognitive demands of the job were completely disconnected from what the POS system assumed about the user's available attention and dexterity. The research also uncovered a significant discrepancy between how managers and technicians described the upsell process — revealing a training-versus-reality gap that had direct implications for the design.
8 locations / 40+ hours
Embedded in service bays to observe full customer transaction flows — capturing how technicians physically interacted with the POS under real-world time and environmental pressure.
90 days of data
Analyzed POS transaction logs to identify which service steps were being skipped, which took longest, and where the correlation was highest between transaction time and cart abandonment of recommended services.
22 technicians
Tested three prototype navigation models with working technicians using physical device simulations — comparing task completion speed and error rates under realistic service conditions.
03 — PROCESS
Our design process started with a set of hard constraints: the interface needed to be operable by someone wearing gloves, visible in variable outdoor lighting conditions, and navigable with minimal eye contact by a technician whose primary attention is on the customer. These constraints shaped every design decision from touch target sizes to information hierarchy. We built and tested at 1:1 scale on physical device simulators early, ensuring that our "feels right" in Figma also translated to the physical reality of the service bay environment.
04 — SOLUTION
The redesigned POS migrated from desktop to a tablet-first form factor with an interface optimized for large touch targets, high-contrast visual hierarchy, and a single primary action per screen. The service workflow was restructured around the natural rhythm of the customer interaction — vehicle check-in, service confirmation, recommended services (now surfaced as a visual card deck rather than a menu tree), and checkout. Each step was designed to be completable in under 30 seconds, with the recommended services screen designed to be shown to the customer directly on the tablet — turning a cumbersome technician task into a natural conversation tool.
The system also introduced vehicle history integration — pulling up the customer's service record automatically at check-in, surfacing relevant recommended services based on mileage and last-service date before the technician needed to look anything up. This transformed the upsell workflow from something technicians dreaded into something the system made easy.
Automatic pull of customer vehicle history at check-in, with mileage-based service recommendations pre-populated before the technician starts the service — eliminating lookup friction entirely.
A visual service card deck designed to be rotated and shown to the customer directly on the tablet — transforming the upsell conversation from menu navigation to natural product presentation.
Large touch targets, one action per screen, and a swipe-based navigation model designed to be usable by a technician with limited fine motor precision — ensuring the system works for the person, not the other way around.
05 — RESULTS
The redesigned POS launched in a pilot group of 35 service centers, with results that exceeded both the UX and business case targets. Transaction time dropped significantly, directly reducing bay turnaround time and increasing customer throughput. The recommended service attachment rate — the business's primary commercial metric for the project — increased by over 30% within the first month of pilot, validating the design team's hypothesis that the old system's complexity was the primary barrier to upsell performance, not technician motivation or customer receptivity.
06 — LEARNINGS
No amount of Figma prototyping prepared me for the reality of designing for someone with oil-covered gloves under time pressure with a customer watching. Research in the actual environment isn't just good practice — for this type of product, it's non-negotiable. The most important design decisions on this project came from observations we couldn't have made anywhere else.
The 31% increase in service attachment rate translated directly to measurable revenue per transaction. This project gave me a clear example of UX work that pays for itself many times over — and that understanding helped me make the business case for research time and iteration cycles on every project since.
The customer-facing recommendation card was the highest-impact single design decision on this project — and it only emerged from spending enough time in bays to understand the social dynamic between technician and customer during the upsell moment. You can't design for that moment without being in it.