Case Study
The first week of pandemic lockdown was my first week working with the team at Kroger; my critical role was to work with the technology team to define the end-to-end ux strategy (including detailed design flows and interactions) and employee processes for stores to offer in-store pickup for groceries when customers couldn't come in.
Our team gave special consideration and empathy to customers who were elderly; during the early pandemic confusion, these customers — and their imminent health concerns — created urgency for us to create solid, workable solutions as quickly as possible.
The Process
I had the opportunity to do ongoing interviews with Kroger employees in the store to understand and empathize with their specific challenges. I applied my work to make things better for our essential front line workers.
Product Design included
- User Interface Design
- Wireframes
- Responsive Design
- User Interviews
- User Testing
- Content Testing
- Stakeholder Workshops
- Test and Learn Discovery
- Product Evangelism
I co-facilitated workshops to identify user personas and sprint activities, did weekly and ongoing in-store visits and comprehensive store research — including extensive employee expert interviews — throughout the first five months of COVID lockdown, and both created designs and directed design work in a process of rapid iteration with developers.
Design Thinking
Kroger's rush to get essential services up and running left little time for an extended sprint, so I directed and collaborated with the product designers to create a targeted, abbreviated Design Sprint to help our entire team focus on what was truly important.
As a Senior Product Design Lead, I directed the design deliverables and process and mentored and led contract designers on the team.
Additionally, I organized brainstorming and workshops, led bi-weekly meetings with multiple corporate stakeholders and trained engineers, product designers and stakeholders on everything from Design Thinking and Sprints to collaborative tools such as Mural, and created and defined Design Ops processes for the Kroger Product Team's employee onboarding and offboarding.
