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How Toast turns weeks of design work into research-ready prototypes in days
Something that historically would have taken weeks, we can now do in a couple of days. It tremendously changes the way we design for restaurant and retail operators.
Toast builds products used throughout a restaurant, from paying employees to taking orders at the point of sale. The conditions in a restaurant can be difficult to reproduce during product research. Toast’s payroll team uses Magic Patterns to build interactive prototypes in its own design system, then puts them in front of operators using familiar data.
Testing payroll with restaurant operators
Aditi Thota is a principal product designer on Toast’s Payroll team. She works on the experience restaurant operators use to pay their staff.
Toast researchers meet operators in their restaurants and run moderated testing sessions. Aditi’s team can prepare prototypes populated with an operator’s own data, then observe how they work through the experience. Operators can show the team where a feature fits into their day and which device they expect to use.
Aditi also uses Magic Patterns to work through early ideas with her team. They can see how the same idea behaves across the products and hardware already used in a restaurant.
"I use Magic Patterns a ton for ideation with my internal team. With one prompt, we can see how an alert would work in the mobile app and across the hardware used in the restaurant."
Starting with Toast’s design system
A prototype needs to feel like Toast before Aditi can put it in front of an operator. Generic screens introduce unfamiliar details into the session, while rebuilding each interface by hand slows the team down.
"There are so many prototyping tools we can use, but they come up with experiences that look nothing like Toast. Because Magic Patterns can reference our design system, we create experiences that look exactly the way they do in our Toast products."
Making a voice interaction tangible
In one project, the payroll team explored a new way for restaurant operators to find reports. Operators often know the information they need without knowing which report contains it.
The team prototyped an experience where someone could describe the outcome aloud. An operator might ask how much they paid an employee last year, and the product would help them find the relevant report.
Aditi said building that interaction in other tools would have taken much longer. Magic Patterns already supported the voice behavior, so she could show people how the idea worked while the team was still discussing it.
Keeping the product story in one place
Aditi brings prototypes into conversations with customers and coworkers so they can see how an experience is changing. She also uses them to document the thinking behind the work.
Screens no longer need to sit in one file while the supporting context lives somewhere else. Aditi can move through each phase of the experience and keep the relevant metrics or trade-offs beside it.
"I actually use it as a storytelling tool. I can switch between phases, break it down, and talk about how an experience will evolve over time. I can layer in metrics and trade-offs that would normally be divided across multiple documents and sources."
Before Magic Patterns, designers spent weeks creating patterns and refining mockups until they looked like Toast. Much of that time went into preparing screens when the team needed to be discussing the experience.
The payroll team can now bring those details into customer research within a couple of days, while the work can still be revised.
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