Sainsbury's
SmartShop | Pay on Handset
Lead Experience Designer · PoC · Android Handset · Mar – Nov 2024 · Live in-store
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Reimagining checkout as a handset-led experience in live UK supermarkets
Shopping with SmartShop changes how people move through a store.
Items are scanned and bagged as you go, removing friction throughout the journey.
But at the final moment—payment—the experience breaks.
Customers return to fixed tills, reintroducing queues, hesitation, and operational bottlenecks.
What would it take to complete the entire journey directly on the handset?
In 2024 I led end-to-end experience, service design, and in-store validation for a live Proof of Concept exploring handset-led checkout.
I focused on validating customer behaviour, operational feasibility, and trust in a non-personal payment context.
26% SmartShop adoption · 2M+ weekly transactions
Role & Contributions
- Defined and validated a new checkout model (scan, pay, exit)
- Aligned product, engineering, and retail operations around feasibility
- Designed payment interactions balancing trust, speed, and fraud risk
- Shaped both customer and colleague-facing behaviours
- Supported implementation and in-store validation
Visible confirmation states increased trust and independent completion, even at the cost of additional steps.
In-store validation revealed how customer confidence and colleague behaviour directly influenced adoption.
Impact & Outcomes
- Delivered live PoC validating handset-led checkout in real stores
- Informed business decisions on feasibility and future investment
- Identified operational confidence as the key driver of adoption
- Influenced the future SmartShop roadmap