Shaping the online grocery shopping experience

Unlike any other type of online shopping

At Jumbo, only when the groceries have been delivered and paid for, the order is completed. And between ordering and paying, a lot can happen. The customer could change their mind and remove or add items, products can go out of stock or become unavailable in the amount or weight the customer opted for. The site or app must take these variables and incidents into account. 

Meet Rowan, Design Lead at Jumbo Tech Campus

The people that guide our customers through our online order processes are our UX designers. We asked Rowan Zajkowski to tell us more about the challenges of UX design. Recently Rowan became a Pathfinder for the UX department. He moved away from day-to-day UX design to focus on strategy and guiding the team. But he’s also one of the more experienced UX experts @ Jumbo Tech Campus. And that makes him the perfect colleague to tell us all about the challenges, fun and benefits of shaping the perfect user experience in grocery shopping at Jumbo.

What does a typical day for a UX Designer look like?

Rowan: “Within Jumbo Tech Campus, we organize our Scrum teams according to the Customer Journey. So you’ll have teams that focus on inspiration, choosing items, ordering and delivery. As a UX Designer you are part of one of these teams and you’ll join their Scrum rituals, like the daily standup in which we decide what to focus on for that day. We work on several projects at once, so smart time management is essential.”

As a designer you’re also part of the design Chapter within Jumbo. This means you’ll join weekly feedback sessions with all designers as well as their bi-weekly chapter meetings. This is where the design team gathers to discuss bigger design challenges and invite guest speakers to provide new insights and inspiration.

“On top of that, there are frequent design sprints where we team up with stakeholders to design solutions for real customer problems”, Rowan adds. “And whenever we create something new or add functionalities, we organize usability tests, so we get feedback on our output straight from our customers.”

Specialists & Generalists

Rowan explains how the UX designers cooperates with other specialists within the Jumbo Tech Campus: “Often, we team up with a Customer Journey Specialist, as a ‘golden couple’. The specialist analyzes the issues, requests or questions at hand and defines how to address them. Then, the designer starts working on a solution.” 

In general, UX Design can involve a set of disciplines. Teams can consist of specialists that specialize in one particular skill. They build their part of a solution and in the end all the components are put together. “But at Jumbo Tech Campus, we choose to take a more hands on approach”, Rowan explains, “Our job requires us to work quite fast, so we are all generalists. Each one of us have some interaction design and visual design skills, so anyone can design and write some copy to explain a functionality to a customer, for example. Of course, everyone has skills they excel in and others skills that are more of a challenge, but we’d rather build a base design first. Then, we ask each other to help refine the result. This makes us work much faster. And our people learn from each other on the job.” 

Team dynamics

Working like this requires open lines of communication and an atmosphere of mutual respect and willingness to help one another. Rowan: “And that is exactly what working here feels like. There’s a real team spirit, even though we’re not formally a team. We know when to call in help, we look each other up, within and outside office hours. That team spirit creates the mental freedom to try new things and innovate. It helps us be and stay creative.” 

Rowan praises the overall atmosphere on the campus: “It feels good. Our campus is a big mixed bag of people from different specialisms, countries, and backgrounds. All of them match on professionalism and drive to be the best in their trade. That creates a whole lot of mutual respect; a perfect basis for a high-speed, high-energy workplace like ours.” 

A job in which you make a real difference

Before he joined Jumbo, Rowan had a successful career as a freelancer: “I worked for all kinds of companies, like a 3D printer manufacturer, a CMS provider and advertising agencies. But nothing like what we do here. I had zero retail experience. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, but nothing major. From the outside, you easily underestimate the complexity of an organization like Jumbo, with its many, many supermarkets and its massive supply chain.”

In his 12 years of working as a freelancer, numerous clients asked him to join their company. But each time, Rowan declined politely. Until Jumbo asked that same question. So, what made him say ‘yes’, this time? Rowan: It was several things. The workplace with all these great people, the professionalism, the challenging work to be done and the fact that what you create, makes a real impact. What you design now will be used by hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people. There’s no substitute for that feeling. I think you will have a hard time finding any other job where your work can make such a difference.” 

Enthusiastic? You can apply for this role here!