the kickfin platform
Building the leading tip management software from the ground up
Leading design at Kickfin
Operating as a Principal Designer allowed me to see design from all angles at a high-growth startup. My responsibilities allowed me to own brand implementation across marketing, support, and product. However, none of our success would be possible without the close collaboration between product, design, and development.
Timeline
Our team consistently operated in two week sprints. As a result, working within our established design system and evolving it in clever ways was paramount to meeting our deadlines.
Background
Kickfin is a leading fintech company revolutionizing how businesses manage tips and gratuities. Trusted by industries like hospitality and food service, Kickfin provides a secure, instant tip distribution platform that eliminates the need for cash, reduces administrative hassles, and ensures employees get paid in real-time, directly to their bank accounts. By streamlining tip-out processes, Kickfin empowers businesses to operate more efficiently while enhancing employee satisfaction and transparency.
The foundation of any platform is it's design system. Establishing clear UI patterns, and adhering to them builds familiarity and trust with the user. The more familiar, the less they have to question, the more efficiently they work.
Typography
Typography is more than just picking a font, it’s a key player in how users interact with your product. Clear, well-chosen typography enhances readability, builds trust, and reinforces your brand’s personality. It makes complex information feel approachable. Our brand font, Euclid Circular A, is fluid enough to build a robust hierarchy for the platform's needs.
Base Components
Kickfin's base components comprised mostly of data tables, visualizations, and payment information. Combined with foundational elements like buttons or dropdown menus, the core of the platform existed within these components and their variants. It allowed us to keep a lean front end library that flexed with our wide variety of customer needs.
Navigation
Each of our customers was different. As such, the navigation needed to enable users to switch between organizations or individual stores seamlessly. With up to 20 different user journeys, navigation became massively important in how we structured the site.
Color Usage
Unfortunately, shades of gray are not actually sexy. But they are practical for data tables and differentiating segments of information. Along with our primary blue colors and bright accents, the interface took on a friendly and informative personality.
Kickfin's primary goal was to enable restaurant mangers to efficiently manage their tips and issue payments. Managers went from counting cash and manual math to automated tip calcs in 60 seconds.
Issuing Payments
A quick and seamless process allows managers to select employees, enter payment data, and issue payments under 60 seconds. This was the key that allowed Kickfin to appeal to so many big brands like Marco's Pizza and Bar Louie.
Reporting
Once the payments are out, managers needed a way to track all of the data for employees, as well as each site and parent organization. Much of this needed to be track for payroll and tax purposes so data visualization and detailed tables were crucial to delivering this information in an understandable way.
Bulk Upload
We even offered users the ability to upload their own CSV files and our software would adapt to their formatting, automatically detecting employee payments. This could shorten the payment process to mere seconds.
Perhaps the most significant advance our team made was through Tip Calculations. Integrating with point of sale platforms like Toast and Square allowed us to pull in all of the restaurant's check data and automatically interpret payments to be issued.
Integrations
Connecting with platforms like Toast and Square allowed us to take in so much more data. This required us to expand the capabilities of many existing features like reporting and payments.
Adaptability
Inevitably, our design system had to evolve to account for the new direction. Having a solid foundation saved us countless hours in the development process.
Configuration
You could pick any ten restaurants in the country and I doubt you'd find a pair alike. As such, our platform needed to be flexible enough in configuration for any restaurant to set up their own personal tip calculation rules.
Kickfin's growth stemmed from it's popularity with restaurants. Time is the most finite resource we have and Kickfin was giving managers hours back in their days. But don't take my word for it:
4.9
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4.9
Deloitte Technology Fast 500
Ranking 65th on the list, Kickfin was the highest ranked restaurant tech company with over 2000% growth over the three year period.
2024 Inc. 5000
Ranked inside the top 200, Kickfin was the fastest growing restaurant tech company on the list. The platform's quality was strong enough to land in the Top 25 Software list, placing Kickfin in the top 5% of the Inc. 5000 list.
2024 Inc. Best in Business
Kickfin was once again recognized for our innovation in the restaurant tech space. We were honored for achievement in product launches, customer satisfaction, and product innovation.
95%
reduction in manager's time
$2b
in payments issued
0%
of customers have returned to cash
"His designs have been durable and easy to extend as our product has evolved. I can wholeheartedly recommend Chris, and I would encourage any company looking for a seasoned person to lead their design efforts to give him consideration."
mike caffey
Chief Technical Officer, Kickfin