Summary
When the pandemic forced necessary lockdowns across the country, Canadians were discouraged from shopping in stores to avoid spreading COVID-19, the challenge of quickly and efficiently pivoting to ensure groceries could reach customers fell to retailers. In this session, Tiffany Cheng reveals how Loblaw, a beloved national retailer in Canada, rapidly shifted its grocery delivery launch plans in response to increased competition and a global pandemic. Learn how Loblaw integrated speed and rigor, and adopted an approach of flexibility, short-term planning, and pivoting workflows to meet rapidly-changing conditions.
Key Insights
-
•
Design teams can accelerate delivery by identifying parallel work streams and rearranging task order rather than cutting scope.
-
•
Low-fidelity, untested mockups can be sufficient to start technical feasibility work, enabling concurrent design and development.
-
•
Prioritizing human needs in crisis situations means launching imperfect but usable products to meet urgent outcomes like food delivery during a pandemic.
-
•
In mature products, vertical slices focusing deeply on specific experience parts can be combined with horizontal slices providing broad outlines to speed work.
-
•
The urgency of pandemic lockdowns forced a rethink of traditional design processes infused with more flexibility and less emphasis on pixel-perfect deliverables.
-
•
Office staff were redeployed to support high-demand grocery pickup fulfillment, highlighting cross-team collaboration in high-pressure times.
-
•
Launching early with a 'good enough' solution allows subsequent refinement post-launch, especially when continuous digital updates are possible.
-
•
Designers must balance business goals and user needs when deciding which bug fixes or improvements can be deferred or sliced incrementally.
-
•
Understanding and nailing the core human need helps avoid getting lost in details when time and resources are limited.
-
•
The pandemic elevated grocery services to essential status, reshaping priorities around safety, speed, and customer trust in digital shopping experiences.
Notable Quotes
"Groceries became the center of the pandemic; you can live without clothes or movies but not food."
"The most important thing to remember is to be flexible in your concept of a deliverable."
"Not every feature change needs a fully interactive prototype or pixel-perfect mock-up."
"Done is better than perfect. You can always refine afterwards."
"People don’t use our products for the sake of using them; they use them to achieve an outcome."
"If push comes to shove, think about the human need – can they achieve their goal with an imperfect but usable product?"
"When I am in lockdown and need food without leaving the house, I want to order groceries online and get them delivered to stay safe."
"Work blended into personal lives – there was no starting or stopping anymore."
"We could launch without implementing all usability fixes. It might be odd at times but usable, and that’s what matters now."
"We need to slice down the work into achievable, valuable increments, not just push out stuff for the sake of it."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"There’s never enough attention you can give to change management in scaling design impact — don’t do it alone."
Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone
June 15, 2018
"If I don’t have a map, I can’t see patterns or apply context-specific gameplay."
Simon WardleyMaps and Topographical Intelligence (Videoconference)
January 31, 2019
"There’s a gap between intentions and impact; humility is needed to close it."
Sandra CamachoCreating More Bias-Proof Designs
January 22, 2025
"Appealing to stakeholders’ best interests helps build trust and rapport."
Darian DavisLessons from a Toxic Work Relationship
January 8, 2024
"My goal today is to showcase how generative AI can go beyond just speeding up our processes and actually catapult us in our career."
Fisayo Osilaja[Demo] The AI edge: From researcher to strategist
June 4, 2024
"Creating tangible artifacts forces reaction and debate, helping break enterprise paralysis and drive decisions."
Uday GajendarThe Wicked Craft of Enterprise UX
May 13, 2015
"What’s so difficult about designing a login? On the surface, it’s simple, but the real challenge was cultural alignment across business units."
Davis Neable Guy SegalHow to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
June 10, 2021
"We stopped talking about patterns and consistency and started talking about scalability and speed to connect with stakeholders."
Eniola OluwoleLessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
October 24, 2019
"At Qubits, you can customize or copy standard design processes like Lean UX and add or remove activities easily."
Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank DeshpandeIntroduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
September 9, 2022
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What practical steps can service designers take to become comfortable with technical conversations about APIs?
What challenges do sustainability teams face inside large tech companies according to Tristan’s experience?
What are practical ways to incorporate participatory design in accessibility research?