01. Overview
Kotaku was a government-initiated program by the Ketapang Regency Communication and Informatics Office (Dinas Komunikasi dan Informatika Kabupaten Ketapang) to gain better visibility into the region’s MSME landscape through transaction data.
The product was designed as a Point-of-Sale application for local MSMEs, allowing business owners or cashiers to record daily transactions.
For the government, the resulting data could provide a broader view of MSME activity and support regional analysis, including taxation planning.
I worked as a third-party designer, translating requirements from the project client into the product structure and interface.
![[GANTI INI: deskripsi gambar yang informatif]](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2025/09/09/08/52/design-9824072_1280.jpg)
02. The Challenge
The requirements came primarily from the client, while I had no direct access to the end users or government stakeholders.
This meant I needed to translate the available requirements into a POS experience without direct user validation.
Rather than starting with visual design, I first looked at how existing POS products solved similar problems.
Competitive benchmark
I reviewed:
I compared their:
How features and information were grouped.
How users moved between common POS tasks.
How familiar interactions such as transactions and product management were handled.
So, I studied familiar POS patterns to reduce unnecessary complexity when translating the requirements into Kotaku.
03. My Approach
Once the requirements were clear, I broke them down into the pages and relationships needed to support the core POS experience.
Once the requirements were clear, I broke them down into the pages and relationships needed to support the core POS experience.
My process was:
The core experience centered around recording transactions, managing products, and reviewing transaction history.
I also made an informed assumption based on my previous experience designing products for MSMEs at Ula: cash would remain an important payment method for this audience.
This was a design assumption rather than a finding from direct Kotaku user research.
04. Designing the Experience
The core flow was structured around a simple transaction journey:
One of the more challenging parts was the receipt experience.
Unlike most interface components, the receipt had to work beyond the screen. I created the receipt template with the physical printing output in mind and tested how the layout translated into an actual printed receipt.
![[GANTI INI: deskripsi gambar yang informatif]](https://andiastika.com/mystaging01/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/02-UI.png
)
05. Outcome
Kotaku was eventually launched on Google Play, although the application is no longer publicly available.
During the project, the product scope also expanded through roadmap features such as:
- Multi-order management
- Inventory management
- Cashless payment
- Tablet compatibility
For one of the feature extensions, I involved a junior designer to support the Information Architecture, while I continued to own the overall UI and design direction.
Success measurement
Post-launch product metrics were not available to me because of my third-party role.
If evaluating Kotaku today, I would measure:
06. Reflection
Kotaku taught me an important distinction between designing from requirements and designing from validated needs.
At the time, I worked primarily through the project partner, so my understanding of the government’s goals and the MSMEs’ actual workflows was based on the information available to me.
With my experience today, I would make three things more proactive:
I would request direct conversations with the government stakeholder to understand the business objectives and define success criteria earlier.
My previous experience with MSMEs helped me form useful assumptions, but those assumptions should still be validated with actual Kotaku users.
I would establish adoption, usage, and business metrics before development so the team could evaluate whether the product was actually creating value.
Want to discuss this project?
I’d love to talk through the process, the decisions, and the lessons learned.