Deliveroo is a food delivery company with ****4 product areas: Consumers, Riders, Restaurants, and Operations.

As the first Principal Designer, I was responsible for increasing the output speed and quality of the product design team (20+ designers) and prepare for growth.

During my tenure (2017 → 2019), I streamlined Deliveroo's products under 2 design systems, built UI kits for designers, built component libraries for engineers with Matt Vagni, re-integrated Branding in the product design process, and promoted a culture of craft, accountability and collaboration.


Challenges

Illustration by Ben Pearce

Illustration by Ben Pearce

Product Growth

In 2017, Deliveroo aimed to add product surfaces to counter competitors' offerings as quickly as possible. To name a few: subscriptions, promotions, restaurant pick-up, variable delivery fees, new search and filtering, in-house restaurant brands, rider earnings, rider onboarding, and more!

Improving Efficiency

Deliveroo was transitioning from labor-intensive operations to automated processes. This increased demand for internal tooling and architectural planning.

Breaking Down Design Silos

Each product organization had evolved independently and distanced themselves from Brand & Marketing. Product designers (20+ strong at the time) couldn't switch teams easily and wasted time re-inventing the wheel. The product quality gap between Deliveroo and its competitors was widening.


Building the Foundation

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The first step was to conduct an inventory of all surfaces and to interview every designer and content strategist on the team. It was determined that: