Rosenverse
Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor

Gold
Thursday, June 9, 2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Share the love for this talk
Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor
Speakers: Tiffany Cheng
Link:

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

  • Prioritizing what customers need most during a crisis helps guide which features and fixes to focus on for faster delivery.

  • Breaking work into parallel streams allows teams to work concurrently, speeding up overall progress without sacrificing quality.

  • Using low-fidelity, untested mockups can be sufficient to start technical development early, enabling faster iteration cycles.

  • Vertical slices focus on specific parts of the experience, while horizontal slices provide a general outline before deep dives; combining both can optimize workflows.

  • Launching a minimally viable but usable product during urgent situations can better serve customers than waiting for perfect.

  • Developers only need a general outline, not pixel-perfect designs, to begin feasibility assessments and coding.

  • Organizations can repurpose staff (e.g., office colleagues volunteering for order picking) to meet unexpected demand spikes.

  • Competitive pressure (like a rival launching delivery) can force teams to reshuffle and prioritize work for speed gains.

  • Managing technical debt during rapid development can be done by breaking fixes into smaller incremental improvements tied to business goals.

  • Digital products’ inherent flexibility allows continuous post-launch improvements, making speed-first approaches less risky.

Notable Quotes

"Groceries became the center of the pandemic. You can live without new clothes or movies, but not without 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."

"Developers just needed a general outline; they didn’t require every detail to start their work."

"Done is better than perfect. You can always refine afterwards."

"People don’t use our products for the sake of using them. It’s to achieve an outcome."

"When push comes to shove, think about the human need. Are they able to do that with an imperfect but usable product?"

"Digital products aren’t like buildings; they can keep changing and moving as you need."

"We applied usability test fixes post-launch to get the service out earlier during lockdown."

"Breaking down debt into smaller slices can enable incremental improvements across upcoming projects."

Ask the Rosenbot
Jason Mesut
Shaping design, designers and teams
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Theresa Neil
Designing for Wellness: Specializing in Healthcare
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Megan Nipe
Human-Centered Design for Engagement: Maturing from Newsletterville to Personalized, One-to-One Messaging
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Lisa Spitz
Building Trust Through Equitable Research Practices
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Jacqui Frey
Flow and Superfluidity for Design Orgs
2018 • DesignOps Summit 2018
Gold
Alla Weinberg
Cross-Functional Relationship Design
2022 • Design in Product 2022
Gold
Brigette Metzler
Research Repositories: A global project by the ResearchOps Community
2020 • Advancing Research Community
Deanna Smith
Leading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Lada Gorlenko
Theme 1: Discussion
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Fatimah Richmond
The Future of ReOps as a Strategic Function: A Roadmap for Getting There
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Llewyn Paine
[Demo] Deploying AI doppelgangers to de-identify user research recordings
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Peter Van Dijck
Coffee with Lou #4: Taking a Peek Under the Rosenbot's Hood
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Megan Blocker
Panel: Excellence in Impact
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
John Maeda
About Design Organizations
2019 • DesignOps Community
Landon Barnes
Are My Research Findings Actually Meaningful?
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold

More Videos

Louis Rosenfeld

"This is a great opportunity. This is a gift to yourself to dig in with other design ops peers and really learn together."

Louis Rosenfeld Bria Alexander

Day 1 Welcome

September 23, 2024

Lisa Gironda

"You can control what happens to you but you can control how you respond to it."

Lisa Gironda

Opener: Chief of Staff–An unexpected journey

January 8, 2024

Jamie Beck Alexander

"Quantities can be measured, but qualities need to be mapped — that shift feels core to the designer's role."

Jamie Beck Alexander Nina Gregg Shawn Petersen Bill DeRouchey

How can you find your role in climate?

January 17, 2024

Iram Shah

"An intelligent person understands what is being said; a wise person understands what is left unsaid."

Iram Shah

Closing Keynote: The View from the Top

June 4, 2019

Melinda Belcher

"Sometimes we hire agencies to take on accountability that we internally can’t manage, so their failure is ours too."

Melinda Belcher

Insider preview of Enterprise Experience 2020

May 28, 2020

Natalia Radywyl

"Producers create a care plan for every project — they’re far more than project managers."

Natalia Radywyl

Co-Designing New Power in Australia's Public Sector

November 16, 2022

Uday Gajendar

"To do this work, you can’t do it with a JIRA ticket."

Uday Gajendar

The Rise of Meta-Design: A Starter Playbook

May 19, 2022

Jesse Zolna

"It’s important for us all to experiment with ways to harness the excitement for research as it grows beyond our own teams."

Jesse Zolna

Inviting the Whole Org to Come See For Yourself

March 30, 2020

Steve Baty

"Minimum viable product has become the minimal thing you can do to get out in the world, but doesn’t necessarily satisfy the needs of people you’re serving."

Steve Baty Richard Dalton Maria Giudice Harry Max

Discussion

June 9, 2016