Breathing New Life Into Old Interface Bones

Price Negotiation UI

The screen a branch prices a line item on, and closes the deal from.

Price Scenario UI

The management tool for modelling a pricing strategy before it goes live.

Legacy Transition Screen

The handover from the 1978 system into the new one.

Branch Rollout

Shipped to all 530+ UK branches, not a pilot.

Accessibility Report

Every screen checked with Stark before handoff.

Joined Aria's pricing team to design a new pricing negotiation flow for Travis Perkins – a UK trade supplier serving professional builders across 530+ locations.

The brief: build a price negotiation guide flow employees could actually use – day one, with minimal training + a management access-only tool for oversight and control.

Travis Perkins ran customers on negotiable bulk pricing – but leaving it to individual employees meant the price changed depending on who you asked. With billions in revenue on the line, the business needed one standardized tool that could roll out nationwide without slowing employees or customers down.

To tackle this problem I wanted to keep in mind 3 threads that would shape the interface design direction decisions.

• Thread #1Inconsistency at ScalemoreNo standard price negotiation – it varied store to store, staff member to staff member. Across 530+ locations, many negotiation convos with no consistent experience or outcome for the business.
• Thread #2Testing Pricing DecisionsmoreManagement had no way to test a pricing strategy before it went live – every decision was a live decision, rolled out blind. There was no space to model "what if" scenarios or compare outcomes before committing a change across 530+ stores.
• Thread #3Legacy SystemmoreThe existing system wasn't built for this – old infrastructure, rigid constraints, no room for a UI that could actually support staff in real time. Any fix had to work within a legacy environment, not around it.

I wanted to make the transition between old and new screens feel intentional and not like a mistake - a transition screen to instill confidence felt like the best direction.

• Respecting the Muscle Memory.moreBuilt for a legacy, keyboard-only system from 1978 this design had to speak its language, not replace it. I wanted to implement 3 key factors into the flow:#1 Hotkeys FirstThe new UI copied existing hotkey shortcuts to match muscle memory. Speed for the people who've been doing this for 20 years, with new actions explicitly displayed at the top.#2 Price Range at a GlanceColor-coded gradients show a price range – giving the employee the flexibility to change the price if needed to close a deal.#3 Context that FollowsTransaction details scroll with the negotiation, and previous purchase history surfaces per item – so employees never lose the vital context to help them close mid-deal.
• The Engine Behind the Price.moreWhere price negotiation is reactive to the customer, it all starts with optimization – surfacing the right price before anyone even opens the conversation. In response to this we designed and built our "price scenario manager" flow – giving management the ability to run pricing scenarios prior to implementation, so they could better understand how to save lost revenue.#1 Filter LogicComplex pricing variables reduced to a structure reps can actually navigate under pressure.#2 Inspired by the File FinderBorrowed the mental model of something people already know – folder-style filtering – to make a dense tool feel familiar on day one.#3 Color and IconsStatus and priority read instantly, no legend required.
• The 47-Year-Old System.moreTravis Perkins ran stores on a 1978 in-house system – keyboard-only, older than most of its users. They'd tried matching that legacy look before and hated it: this screen needed to feel modern, even if nothing around it did. Solution: The new UI system needed to standardize negotiation across 530+ stores, give staff a customized price recommendation, let management model and deploy pricing decisions before they go live, and do this all within their legacy environment.

Shipped, Tested, Documented. 4 production-ready negotiation screen variants, 6 end-to-end negotiation flows, and 1 legacy-to-modern transition prototype. Plus a price optimization engine – scenario modeling screens, a commit/deploy flow, and rollout across 530+ branches – all built on 1 design system. Accessibility checked screen by screen with Stark before handoff.