Problem

• Woolworths contracts over 3000 people who deliver online grocery orders. This is via partnership with Linfox, who subcontract the work to other vendors.
• There is no measure or way to understand the experience of what’s happening on the ground nor any standardisation or investment into training, recognition or support.
• Over 90% of drivers leave within 6 months of starting.
• Internal logistics teams held a view that “drivers were stealing from us” when routes look longer than planned.
• 90% of delivery routes took greater than 10% extra vs. the time planned. This was a cost inefficiency of $409k / week.

<aside> ☝ This wasn’t a single problem - it was an experience failure, a communication failure leading to an economics problem.

</aside>

My Role

• I sat within the logistics space as a Senior Experience Designer with the remit of exploring ways to reduce the cost of delivering online orders once they were in the truck (internally referenced as drop cost).
• My contribution to this piece of work included research with Woolies delivery drivers, external delivery drivers and logistics staff.
• Within this work I was responsible for the identification of known problems, and crafting an experience strategy to deliver a viable way forward.

Process

• Ran a series of inception workshops in order to identify:
  • what the business viewed as contributors to cost inefficiencies with deliveries
  • What the upstream teams viewed as inefficiencies
  • Mapped these assumptions into an opportunity framework to investigate (very similar to the opportunity solution tree by Teresa Torres).
• Conducted extensive research with Woolies drivers, external drivers, Linfox and subcontractors.