Breathing Room for Delight
Summary
Over the past few years, the digital team at AusPost has matured into one of the most well-functioning agile trains in Australia. The challenge in this journey to success was to ensure how design and discovery retain their customer centricity in an environment of rapid production. The need was to continue to be proactive instead of reactive in the approach to problem-solving. Some of the challenges were: To ensure there was enough room for the right amount of research for the right problem while ensuring rapid delivery. To ensure that all members of the team from Product to Development could collaborate like a true cross-functional team to come up with solutions to problems. To ensure the team established the right metrics that spoke to the experience. The talk will be a case study of how the Design team experimented with various methodologies to create more breathing room for design-led problem-solving in the agile train.
Key Insights
-
•
Early visions must balance ambition with technical feasibility to avoid unrealistic stakeholder expectations.
-
•
Collaborating early with engineering ensures technical constraints shape feasible designs.
-
•
Quick agile iterations without sufficient customer research can lead to reactive, tech-heavy solutions.
-
•
Cross-channel initiatives require dedicated time and space for proactive problem solving.
-
•
Design sprints are valuable for small focused problems but inadequate for complex, multi-dependency challenges.
-
•
Investing heavily in trendy methodologies without problem clarity can waste resources and stakeholder trust.
-
•
Separating discovery and delivery into parallel tracks creates breathing room for thoughtful design and faster delivery.
-
•
Connecting roles across discovery and delivery is crucial to maintain dialogue and alignment in an enterprise context.
-
•
Establishing a continuous culture of measuring and learning enables ongoing optimization post-delivery.
-
•
Flexible frameworks and push-pull partnerships allow large enterprises to tailor agile and design practices effectively.
Notable Quotes
"There’s no breathing room for design to conceive and execute a delightful solution in an enterprise."
"SAFE is essentially a software development methodology, and fitting experience design into it has been a constant trial and error."
"While we built amazing visions, it would take around three years to build the technical capabilities and integrations needed."
"Quick agile experiments made experiences technically feasible but led to tech-heavy solutions with little customer focus."
"Design sprints were good but not appropriate for our team’s maturity or complex multi-channel problems."
"Finding the right method for the problem is important; don’t drink the Kool-Aid just because the preacher says to."
"Discovery and delivery run parallel without a time dependency on each other, giving breathing room to think and act."
"Design can no longer sit in a corner and complain about not having a seat at the table; partnerships enable progress."
"A brick and mortar enterprise with multiple operations will not always have a prescribed process; you need to carve what works for you."
"It’s never over; it’s a continuous process of improvement."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Testing with the tab key is important, but it has nothing to do with a screen reader user’s actual experience."
Sam ProulxEverything You Ever Wanted to Know About Screen Readers
June 11, 2021
"Even though we are virtual, we are still community and must treat each other with kindness and respect."
Bria AlexanderOpening Remarks
November 17, 2022
"Build relationships before you need them. You can’t create them when the house is on fire."
Corey Nelson Amy SanteeLayoffs
November 15, 2022
"Shared language lets different roles venture out of their comfort zones and collaborate on changing the enterprise system."
Milan GuentherA Shared Language for Co-Creating Ambitious Endeavours
June 6, 2023
"Two researchers can’t come close to digging into the customer problems for 17 product teams."
Erin May Roberta Dombrowski Laura Oxenfeld Brooke HintonDistributed, Democratized, Decentralized: Finding a Research Model to Support Your Org
March 10, 2022
"Simulation or personas can never replace testing with real users to build empathy and get accurate results."
Sam ProulxUnderstanding Screen Readers on Mobile: How And Why to Learn from Native Users
June 6, 2023
"We experimented with AI-powered sprints, but had lots of dead ends and false starts before finding what really works for us."
Mujtaba HameedThe new horizon of ethnography: using AI to unlock the full potential of in-person research
March 11, 2026
"Regulation is part of the solution, but by diversifying who makes technology and embedding safeguards, we can better prevent corruption of well-intentioned products."
Ilana LipsettAnticipating Risk, Regulating Tech: A Playbook for Ethical Technology Governance
December 10, 2021
"If we think disability as a mismatch between user and environment rather than a medical problem, it becomes easier to understand how accessibility benefits everyone."
Samuel ProulxFrom Standards to Innovation: Why Inclusive Design Wins
September 10, 2025
