build/improving-receipt-ux/index.html


1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
	<meta charset="utf-8">
	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
	<meta name="color-scheme" content="dark light">
	<link rel="icon" href="data:,">
	<title>Improving Receipt UX</title>
	<link href="/atom.xml" type="application/atom+xml" rel="alternate" title="Atom feed for blog posts" />
	<link href="/rss.xml" type="application/rss+xml" rel="alternate" title="RSS feed for blog posts" />
<style>*{box-sizing:border-box;}body{font-family:sans-serif;line-height:1.33;margin:0 auto;max-width:650px;padding:1rem;}blockquote{background:rgba(0,0,0,0.1);border-left:4px solid;padding-left:5px;}img{max-width:100%;}pre{border:1px solid;overflow:auto;padding:5px;}table{text-align:left;width:100%;}.footnotes{font-size:90%;}</style>
</head>

<nav>
	<a href="#menu">Menu &darr;</a>
</nav>

<main>
<h1 id="improving-receipt-ux">Improving Receipt UX</h1>
<p>2019-05-15</p>
<p>There was a pretty interesting article posted a couple days ago about rethinking the standard receipt design that I found quite compelling. Although, as good as the concept is, I think it can be improved (simplified) even further.</p>
<h2 id="what-was-the-redesign-exaclty">What was the redesign exaclty?</h2>
<p>Overall <a href="https://twitter.com/datatoviz?lang=en">Susie Lu</a> did a wonderful job tackling such an old and forgotten design. She fixed some major pain points with the current receipt layout:</p>
<ul>
<li>Bubble chart to visually indicate total spent per category</li>
<li>Categorized items by percentage of total spent</li>
<li>List individual items in descending order based on cost</li>
<li>Bar charts to compliment the item listing order</li>
</ul>
<p>Curious how her redesign looks? <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90347782/the-humble-receipt-gets-a-brilliant-redesign">Take a look at the original article</a></p>
<h2 id="what-did-this-concept-get-wrong">What did this concept get wrong?</h2>
<p>Simply put: <strong>paper waste</strong>. </p>
<p>Using bubble and bar charts from a visual design perspective is great - but not so eco-friendly in this instance (since we are dealing with physical paper waste). It might seem like a small nitpick but with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of receipts printed daily, this extra paper space required would add up quickly.</p>
<p>Fortunately, I think with some minor tweaks we can keep the underlying principles of the new redesign, while creating a more eco-friendly layout. We can save more space and therefore save on the overall paper needed.</p>
<h2 id="receipt-redesign">Receipt Redesign</h2>
<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at my redesign concept:</p>
<p>With this layout we are able to keep all the key concepts that <a href="https://twitter.com/datatoviz?lang=en">Susie Lu</a> initially introduced with her receipt design while preserving more space.</p>
<ul>
<li>Categories are still listed by percentage of total spent</li>
<li>Individual items are organized in descending order based on cost</li>
<li>Uppercase and lowercase elements are used to distinguish parent &#47; child items instead of additional space or dividers</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="final-thoughts">Final thoughts</h2>
<p>The original redesign from a visual perspective is <em>wonderful</em> but when you start to think about implementing it into the real world, it seems slightly impractical. My redesign concept is far from perfect (I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;ve overlooked some use cases) but I think it&#8217;s a strong step forward for redesigning our archaic receipt layouts.</p>
<footer role="contentinfo">
    <h2>Menu Navigation</h2>
    <ul id="menu">
        <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
        <li><a href="/projects">Projects</a></li>
        <li><a href="/uses">Uses</a></li>
        <li><a href="/wiki">Wiki</a></li>
        <li><a href="/resume">Resume</a></li>
        <li><a href="/colophon">Colophon</a></li>
        <li><a href="/now">Now</a></li>
        <li><a href="/donate">Donate</a></li>
        <li><a href="/atom.xml">RSS</a></li>
        <li><a href="#top">&uarr; Top of the page</a></li>
    </ul>
    <small>
        Built with <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/barf">barf</a>. <br>
        Maintained with ♥ for the web. <br>
        Proud supporter of <a href="https://usefathom.com/ref/DKHJVX">Fathom</a> &amp; <a href="https://nextdns.io/?from=74d3p3h8">NextDNS</a>. <br>
        The content for this site is <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">CC-BY-SA</a>.<br> The <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht">code for this site</a> is <a href="https://git.sr.ht/~bt/bt.ht/tree/master/item/LICENSE">MIT</a>.
    </small>
</footer>