Designing in a Pandemic: Integrating Speed and Rigor
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
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Prioritizing what customers need most during a crisis helps guide which features and fixes to focus on for faster delivery.
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Breaking work into parallel streams allows teams to work concurrently, speeding up overall progress without sacrificing quality.
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Using low-fidelity, untested mockups can be sufficient to start technical development early, enabling faster iteration cycles.
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Vertical slices focus on specific parts of the experience, while horizontal slices provide a general outline before deep dives; combining both can optimize workflows.
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Launching a minimally viable but usable product during urgent situations can better serve customers than waiting for perfect.
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Developers only need a general outline, not pixel-perfect designs, to begin feasibility assessments and coding.
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Organizations can repurpose staff (e.g., office colleagues volunteering for order picking) to meet unexpected demand spikes.
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Competitive pressure (like a rival launching delivery) can force teams to reshuffle and prioritize work for speed gains.
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Managing technical debt during rapid development can be done by breaking fixes into smaller incremental improvements tied to business goals.
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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."
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