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
"Restoration is not just about replanting trees; it’s about rebuilding entire ecosystems."
Alex Hurworth Bonnie John Fahd Arshad Antoine MarinDesigning a Contact Tracing App for Universal Access
October 23, 2020
"Mentors are wonderful partners for feedback, collaboration, and setting employees up for success."
Laine Riley Prokay Lisa GordonCarving a Path for Early Career DesignOps Practitioners
September 9, 2022
"Once cash prizes were gone, people stopped feeling ownership of the design system."
Eniola OluwoleLessons From the DesignOps Journey of the World's Largest Travel Site
October 24, 2019
"Tell tight, brief stories of insights focused on impact, not on how you conducted your research."
Nathan ShedroffDouble Your Mileage: Use Your Research Strategically
March 31, 2020
"You can just pick up your phone and start testing accessibility instantly without procurement or licensing hurdles."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
November 17, 2022
"It’s important to socialize the research program internally so teams get excited and take initiative."
Feleesha SterlingBuilding a Rapid Research Program (Videoconference)
May 18, 2023
"Bumble’s single feature of women making the first move addressed a huge cultural challenge and lifted the brand."
Neil BarrieWidening the Aperture: The Case for Taking a Broader Lens to the Dialogue between Products and Culture
March 25, 2024
"We move here. We never actually become New Yorkers."
John DevanneyThe Design Management Office
November 6, 2017
"One analyst became our research associate by diving deep into the diary videos and organizing the data."
Katy MogalBut Do Your Insights Scale?
March 12, 2021