Ultrafast Delivery & Dark Fulfillment.
0→1 multi-product launch • Staff Product Designer • 2021-2023
Team
Product Manager (2)
User Researchers (2)
Data Scientists (2)
Product Engineers (5)
ML Engineers (2)
Backend Engineers (5)
Operations (5)
Design Lead (Me)
Design Manager (1)
Content Designers (2)
Product Designers (2)
Timeline
12 months
My role
Design Leadership
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Prototyping
Design System
User Research
A leading grocery technology company that enables people to order groceries online for same-day delivery or pickup, while also providing retailers with powerful fulfillment and e-commerce technology solutions.
The explosion of 15-minute grocery delivery, dominated by companies like GoPuff, Gorillas, and Jokr, posed a significant threat to Instacart's dominant position in the grocery delivery market ahead of IPO.
Instacart’s Core Shopping Experience is optimized for Same-Day Delivery
Goal
Fulfill and deliver smaller full-basket grocery orders from Instacart-operated Dark Warehouses
in 15 minutes or less.
Roadmap
Key Discovery and Competitor Insights
Associates looking for items stalls delivery time
Eliminate the burden on the associates of finding items at the warehouse
Guide them through the optimal path.
Checkout is unnecessary in the warehouse context
Charge for items as they are being picked and bypass checkout completely.
Delivery drivers should be pre-stationed at the site
There should be two separate roles for warehouse associates and delivery drivers.
Metrics Goals and End-to-end User Journey
Core Shopping Experience
Warehouse Shopping Experience (1st iteration)
Iterations & New Design System
We traveled to the Warehouse to test our picking experience. During testing, we introduced a new signage system and integrated it into the digital experience.
I defined a new design system for Ultrafast experiences, which we integrated into the Instacart Design System.
Design Sprint Concepts
We ran 2-week cross-functional design sprint to define the remaining 3 core experiences:
Inventory Management, Order Staging, Pickup & Delivery
Inventory Management Experience
We tested our new Inventory Management concepts at the Warehouse. After a few modifications, this experience increased item accuracy from 80% to 95%.
Staging and Handoff
We tested staging and handoff experiences at the Warehouse. This experience resulted in a 2-minute reduction in the overall fulfillment experience.
Order Pickup and Delivery
The tests of the new pickup and delivery experiences resulted in a 2-minute reduction of Order Handoff and a target 10-minute total delivery time.
Launch in Orlando, FL
For this launch, we were able to exceed the target and achieve a 99% item found rate, which became a step-change improvement for our fulfillment capabilities from the traditional 80% in the core experience.
Launch Outcomes
Over the course of 12 months, we scaled this experience to two more locations in Florida, one in Atlanta, and two in NYC, using a playbook that the team was able to successfully apply to all new locations independently. Later, Ultrafast Fulfillment capabilities became a core part of the Instacart platform, and to this day, they are white-labeled for major retailers nationwide to power their own fulfillment needs.
Press
