Customer centered design for the digital experience of a Midwest Grocery Supercenter
Introduction
Like many industries, COVID-19 forced grocery retailers to transform their shopping experience from brick & mortar to an online ordering experience. ​
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As Lead UX Designer for the Meijer mobile app, I helped drive UX strategy and major architectural UXUI enhancements through collaboration, prioritization, and iteration planning.
I directly managed UX strategy and workflow for 10 UX resources who supported the 7 front end agile development teams. I partnered with 4 other UX Leads and 4 Product Managers to support 3 value streams, 2 platforms, and one Design System team.
Lead UX Designer, Mobile App
Position
Environment
One central, 40 person UX team with designers distributed across 3 SAFe Agile trains as UX Leads, Researchers, Architects, and UXUI Designers.
Key Responsibilities & Deliverables
UX Process Definition
Led UX PI Planning
Epic/Feature Refinement
Resource Allocation
Stakeholder Reviews
Requirements Gathering
Competitive Analysis
Use-Case Identification
Information Architecture
Iteration Mapping
Design Reviews
Wireframes
Mentoring
UX Advocate
Prototypes
User Flows
Site Maps
UX Process Definition
Continual Improvement
SAFe Agile works, but doesn't effectively account for UX at any level. As a lead, I worked to define how each of the UX roles on the 40-person UX team would integrate into the larger SAFe Agile environment.
This effort included:
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Most effective UX team structure with the UX Manager.
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When and how each of the UX roles should be engaged throughout the product design cycle.
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What activities and deliverables were expected in each of the triple diamond phases of discover, define, and deliver.
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Structure and template for UX PI Planning for all role types.
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How to efficiently track UX work in Azure for all applicable ticket types - epic, feature, user story, enabler, and spike.
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Training all internal UX team members and external cross-functional partners.
Mentoring
As a leader I care deeply about my people. I take the time to build individual relationships with each team member to support their growth and team cohesion.
I worked with each of my designers, learning their unique strengths, introducing new ways of thinking, challenging any assumptions, and coach them in hard situations.
Lindsey Freitag
Previously Jr. UXUI Designer
Emma Fowler
Previously Jr. UXUI Designer
Lizz Lanius
Previously Mid. UXUI Designer
UX Strategy
UX Component Architecture for Web
Twofold Problem:
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The front-end components with the same UI atom were disconnected, requiring developers to hunt for every instance of the atom whenever there was a brand or UI change. This resulted in extra development costs and countless inconsistencies across Meijer.com.
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The marketing team uses a CRM system to select those front-end components and build marketing web pages. The CRM experience was counterintuitive, creating hours of inefficiencies for simple tasks - and many of these pages and components needed changes weekly when ads and promos turned over.
Twofold Solution:
This was primarily a technical and UX architectural challenge, because the UI of the components didn't drastically change.
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Using my technical background I collaborated with the architectural lead, marketing users, dev support teams, POs, PMs, and the fledgling design system team to define the business, user, and customer needs and design the solutions.
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We architected that UI atoms (ex. buttons) and UX logic would nest within larger components (ex. different variants of a carousel). Any future UI changes could be done once at the atom level, and it would propagate to all components that atom was nested within.
This nesting accomplished:
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Reduced dev time and cost to maintain the component library.
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Increase UI consistency across the website, improving customer experience.
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Future scaling and re-branding of the component library to other companies under the Meijer umbrella.
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During this significant architectural update, streamlined the CRM component selection and page building experience for the marketing team.
This included:
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Improved site hierarchy and navigation.
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Consistent and standard desktop patterns.
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And accomplished:
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Reduced time to build and deliver marketing pages.
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Components were published with increased consistency.
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Reduced CRM training for new team members.
