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<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>
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