Musinsa's Self-POS Build Story: Designing an Experience to Fill an Unstaffed Checkout

Musinsa rapidly expanded offline to 72 stores nationwide and faced the problem of lengthening payment wait times and checkout bottlenecks during peak hours. Instead of simply adding more registers, the company launched the Self-POS project to redesign the entire payment flow.

Since offline products required answers found in stores rather than in the office, the team directly visited competing SPA brands and offline-focused retail stores to observe customer payment processes. As a result, they confirmed that cases satisfying speed, membership conversion, global support, and online-offline connection all at once were rare, and Musinsa set its goal to solve all four of these simultaneously.

Even before the specs and PRD were finalized, the team used AI like a design assistant to first visualize the payment flow and screen structure. By inputting the tasks organized from field research, they quickly extracted branch structures and screen flows, then added personas and brand direction to refine them into Musinsa-like information hierarchy and visual style. This approach shifted text-centered discussions into screen-centered decision-making, reducing communication costs and design time.

The design centered on four key elements.

• Payment speed: To enable completion in around 3 minutes while standing amid surrounding noise, discount details are hidden by default, keeping focus on the current number of scanned items and payment amount.
• Membership conversion: Rather than pushing sign-up to the forefront, the approach centered on benefits, naturally encouraging sign-up through the start screen banner, product scan screen, and the step right before payment.
• Global support: Foreign-language users or global members are automatically branched into a tax refund flow, with motion graphics intuitively guiding next actions such as removing security tags, inserting a card, and scanning products.
• Online-offline connection: After payment is completed, instead of a paper receipt, a smart receipt is issued in the app, leading to purchase history confirmation and reward benefits.

Once the UX was finalized, the UI and physical space were unified into a single interface. Matching the monotone interior of Musinsa Standard stores, the team applied square components without rounding, a high-contrast black-and-white based palette, and minimal layouts. They also visited a furniture factory to verify actual flow, including display height and angle, card terminal placement, RFID recognition space, basket size, hanger return location, and distance to trash bins.

Ultimately, Self-POS was not just a screen but the entire space functioning as a single interface. The project is currently scheduled for phased rollout starting with Musinsa Standard Songdo Store, and will continue to be improved afterward based on metrics such as payment speed, membership conversion rate, and exception handling.