MeowMart - A POS Mobile App for Tracking Merch, Sales, and Paw-sitive Progress

Client
Cats of Prisma Volunteer Group

Project Duration
1 week

Industry
Animal Welfare / Rescue / Non profit

Tools Used
Google Docs, Figma

To improve accuracy and volunteer coordination during community bazaars, I designed an app that digitizes merchandise tracking, sales recording, and income reporting. This project evolved from a real need and is currently being used at our fundraising events. I’m now working on refining the design and features as part of my UI/UX portfolio.

Challenge

Community bazaars rely heavily on volunteers to manage merchandise sales, often using a manual paper-and-pen system. This approach leads to frequent issues such as miscounted inventory, illegible handwriting, misplaced items, and inconsistent income tracking. Volunteers with limited time and training find it difficult to maintain accurate records under pressure, and post-event reconciliation becomes tedious and error-prone.

There is a need for a simple, mobile-first solution that can be easily used by rotating volunteers to track merchandise, log transactions, and report sales income accurately in real time. The design must prioritize clarity, speed, and ease of use, while also addressing the chaotic, fast-paced nature of live bazaar environments.

One of our volunteers who is an app developer by profession, developed an app to use for the bazaar. It has been used once as a trial run from the recent fundraiser event. My role in this project is to find ways and further improve this app. Which leads me to this design problem statement:

Q: How might we provide volunteers a faster, clearer way to track merchandise and sales during bazaars?

Objectives

  • Enable real-time sales tracking and reporting

  • Improve legibility and data accuracy

  • Prevent inventory loss or miscounts

Research

To better understand the challenges faced during community bazaars, I volunteered to man our booth and observed other volunteers how they process an order using the manual pen and paper. The paper document that we use has a table guide in it, but lacks enough space for important information such as contact details (for pre orders), address, and other order details. Informal interviews with volunteers revealed that many felt overwhelmed by the lack of structure, often forgetting to update sales logs or struggling to read what others had written. These insights highlighted the need for a more reliable, legible, and user-friendly solution that could support volunteers in real-time and minimize the risk of errors.

User Persona

Design Process

  1. Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation

Monitoring cat care tasks was difficult due to scattered, manual updates across Google Sheets and Telegram, leading to missed feeds and uncoordinated schedules. This project aimed to simplify tracking, scheduling, and communication for feeders by centralizing everything into one accessible system.



The Problem:


There was a need for a centralized tool to help volunteers track feeding schedules and monitor the health of community cats.

Volunteers were relying on scattered notes and chat groups, making it difficult to ensure consistency in cat care routines.

Solution:

For this project, I applied the Design Thinking process to address the challenges faced by community cat feeders. I began by interviewing five Cats of Prisma volunteers to understand their routines and pain points.

From their insights, I identified the core problem: the lack of a centralized, easy-to-use system for feeding updates and scheduling. I then created a user persona and mapped out a simplified user flow to guide the UI design. Using Figma, I built an interactive prototype focused on improving task visibility and reducing manual effort.

Finally, I conducted usability tests and iterated on the design based on feedback to ensure it effectively supported the volunteers’ needs.