Aloha Smart Manager

Visit NCR Voyix

Introduction

For a restaurant to stay profitable, managers need to staff efficiently, stay compliant with regulations, and still be available to serve both customers and employees. NCR Voyix has long built products to meet these needs, but over the years the portfolio grew into too many siloed tools with overlapping features that weren’t designed for cloud-era scaling.

Aloha Smart Manager (ASM) was created to reimagine these legacy products as a unified, cloud-based solution that integrates seamlessly with any POS and third-party provider. This product also strengthens NCR Voyix’s competitive edge against players like Toast, Square, and Clover. ASM offers three packages: Starter, Core, and Smart.

My Role as UX Designer

I led the end-to-end work stream for labor, established alignment patterns adopted by other teams, and cross-collaborated with other product teams for a consistent user experience. I saw the project through from the kickoff meeting, to the Starter launch, and through multiple iterations thereafter.

Timeline & Team

Timeline: March 2022 - August 2025

My team:

  • 4+ UX Designers


  • 4+ UX Researchers


  • 8+ PMs/POs (In-house and outsourced)

  • 30+ Developers (In-house and outsourced)

Constraints

The project evolved significantly during my time on the team. Initially, we collaborated with a consulting firm, which required adhering to strict contractual guidelines while staying within budget. Leadership shifted priorities, resulting in budget cuts that reduced UX, product, and development resources. As additional teams joined to manage certain experiences of the solution, I managed cross-product dependencies and worked to create a consistent user experience within the constraints of existing system architectures.

Schedule

Challenge

Scheduling on its legacy product is outdated, lacks essential functionality, and fails to meet accessibility standards.

Approach

I designed a scheduling experience informed by customer feedback and usability insights. To meet the Starter launch, I prioritized essential features while slating the remaining for the Core release.

Design-Supported Features

Introduced features to enhance scheduling speed and optimized data visibility for cost-effective staffing decisions.

Incorporated a Summary Data drawer to surface key labor-costs metrics
Added clear alerts using icons, tooltip, and WCAG-compliant color texts to warn userS

Accessibility Stratetgy & Implementation

I conducted a comprehensive audit with the accessibility specialist and collaborated with development to prioritize critical fixes. This ensured Schedule would meet WCAG AA at launch.

Roadmap Shift & Reassessment

In my initial handoff, the Summary Data drawer included seven data points, but only three could be exposed in the first release. The data source was being developed alongside Schedule, and several reports weren’t ready in time. To keep launch on track, we prioritized what was available and planned the remaining data points for the Core release.

Outcomes & Impact

The redesign made Schedule WCAG-compliant at launch and provided essential features out-of-the-box so managers could start scheduling right away.

Labor Rules

Roadmap Shift & Reassessment

Although labor rules configuration was redesigned, it was not compliant with overtime and break regulations in certain jurisdictions due to gaps in its current design and functionality. This prevented it from being sold in certain states. My team and I worked with channel partners to understand what else is needed to meet compliance.

Design Enhancement

I enhanced the existing labor rule template to support customizable overtime and break rules, making it more adaptable to various jurisdictions while also simplifying data migration.

Cross-Feature Integration

I applied break and overtime enforcement to other touch points such Labor reports and Schedule.

Outcomes & Impact

With these compliance gaps closed, I helped unlock sales in key-state jurisdictions such as California, New York, Oregon, etc.

Labor Reports

Challenge

The legacy reporting system offers too much flexibility, resulting in an overload of disorganized, hard-to-manage reports. The inefficient layout further compounds the issue, making it difficult for users to navigate and extract meaningful insights.

Approach

I partnered with Product leaders to identify and prioritize essential reports to reduce clutter.

Solution

I redesigned the report layout for a more intuitive and user-friendly experience.

Validating Design

I tested mid-fidelity prototypes to see whether a modal or dropdown filter worked best for users when interacting with the filter bar.

Implementation

I worked with development to implement the filter bar and refreshed design documentation to create a more consistent adoption across the product.

Outcomes & Impact

I reduced labor report clutter from 100+ reports to 12 essentials and improved discoverability. I increased cross-team adoption of shared components across all reports, dashboard, inventory, and etc.

Shift Tracker

Challenge

Legacy product is outdated and needed more functionality managing employees clocking in and out while staying compliant with labor rules.

Approach

I exposed essential shift details in a scalable, discoverable mobile-first design layout.

Design for Compliance

I applied icons and WCAG-compliant color texts to inform change in shift status. I designated a separate tab for filtering potential out-of-compliance shifts.

Design for Efficiency

Kept crucial information within a tap to see shift and employee details to maximize staffing efficiency.

Designed for Small to Large Restaurants

Robust filtering and sorting to find subset of shifts for all staffing sizes.

Responsive Design

Shift Tracker was designed mobile-first to support managers working on the floor to serve both customers and employees. I ensured the layouts and components scaled seamlessly across desktop and tablet for consistency in any context.

Roadmap Shift & Reassessment

Design handoff had to be broken down into releases as the backend infrastructure was not ready to pull in live data for features such as shift status update or punches. The basic view with the shift details and filters were implemented in its first release.

Outcomes & Impact

Delivered a robust, accessible, mobile feature that improved staffing efficiency and compliance.

Reflections & Learnings

As the lead designer for Labor, I learned to:

  • design within complex, evolving systems while balancing business goals, technical constraints, and user needs

  • strengthen cross-team alignment by clearly articulating design trade-offs and rationale

  • incorporate accessibility in from the start to ensure WCAG compliance

  • improve documentation and design system practices by creating reusable patterns like the global filter bar

  • apply systems thinking to create scalable, consistent solutions

  • validate reusable design patterns early with users to reduce rework and speed adoption

Moving forward, I will:

  • collaborate early with external stakeholders, such as channel partners, to capture needs we might be overlooking