Next Generation Retail Security.
Upgrading safety and experience.
Retail security gates are often perceived as imposing barriers, signaling theft prevention more loudly than welcome. This project explored how next-generation retail security could protect merchandise while enhancing, rather than diminishing, the shopping environment.
As a UX & Industrial Designer on this project, I worked on early-stage concept development for Checkpoint System's next-generation product, balancing brand heritage, emerging technology, and real-world retail context to reimagine how security could feel within modern stores.
Recognition: iF Design Award Winner, 2019; Good Design Award Winner, 2018
Challenge
Retail environments require visible protection, but traditional security gates often feel intrusive and unwelcoming.
How might we design retail security that communicates safety and confidence—without undermining the shopping experience it’s meant to support?
Process & Insights
We mapped brand cues and category conventions, then tested form directions at full scale (mockups + AR in real stores). Seeing the concepts in context revealed quick insights into perception and scale, leading us to scale back in certain areas and build others out.
Influence & Achievements
Established a design language that softened security presence without compromising performance or trust
Played a key role in an award-winning concept adopted as a reference point for future platform exploration
Challenged assumption that effective security must feel imposing, helping shift the organization toward experience-led solutions
Crafting around the brand language and competitive landscape
To ground our approach, we studied both Checkpoint’s historical brand language and the broader competitive landscape.
Understanding which formal elements signaled trust, robustness, and brand continuity versus which conveyed intimidation or obsolescence helped establish a design direction that felt both advanced and unmistakably Checkpoint.
Design iterations
Design exploration spanned sketching, concept development, full-scale mock-ups, and CAD modeling to test a range of architectures and aesthetic directions.
The challenge was not simply visual refinement, but reconciling the perception of robust security with streamlined, modern form, while accommodating new underlying technology.
We intentionally prioritized presence and trust over making the gate “disappear,” even though it meant being more visually assertive than minimal concepts.
AR concept modeling
To quickly and efficiently evaluate how concepts would truly feel in context, top contenders were modeled and placed at full scale using AR via HoloLens.
This allowed us to experience designs in real retail environments early, revealing how form, proportion, and presence influenced perception beyond what renderings alone could convey.
Retail security: reframed
The final design reframed retail security as an integrated part of the shopping experience. Protection and experience were no longer competing forces, but complementary ones.
The result earned international recognition not for hiding security, but for making it a seamless part of the retail landscape (proof that thoughtful industrial design can transform functional requirements into experiential assets).
The project also demonstrated how thoughtful industrial and UX design can transform functional requirements into experiential assets, elevating both safety and brand perception in retail spaces.