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Taking a content design approach to how AI could help our colleagues

Co-op
A colleague in a Co-op store is standing in the aisle of a store holding a small handheld device. She is inputting information into the handheld device. There are jars of jam and containers of coffee on the shelves behind her.


Our ‘How do I’ (HDI) website was created by content designers pair-writing with store and operational colleagues. The aim was to provide operational policy information, in a way that was easy to understand, in a busy store environment.

Store colleagues rely on ‘How Do I’ to comply with legal regulations and maintain high standards of customer service. Colleagues tell us it’s useful, but difficult to find some information quickly. Our Content Design and Data Science teams worked together to test how using generative artificial intelligence (AI) and a large language model (LLM) could help.

It proved to be a great opportunity to learn from how content designers can work with teams who want to make the most of AI capability.

Taking a content design approach

As a Content Design team at Co-op, we create content that is evidence-based, user-focussed, and based on shared standards to meet our commercial goals. We want to keep these content design principles at the centre of our approach to AI generated content.

The teams designed a process that combined a Co-op built AI and a Microsoft LLM. It means that when a user enters a query, a Co-op built AI system looks at a copy of our ‘How do I’ website and finds the information that is most likely to be relevant. It takes this data and the original question, and feeds it all to a Microsoft LLM. The LLM then generates a response and passes it back to the user as an answer.

How the AI works

There are a number of illustrations to show a process of how the AI works in steps. Illustration 1: hands using a phone: Colleague types a question into AI HDI Illustration 2: a screen with a magnifying glass and options: AI search engine looks up relevant information. from HDI. Keyword and semantic search. Passes the question and relevant info to LLM Illustration 3: Letters LLM in a file: LLM generates a response and sends it back to the AI Illustration 4: Mobile showing a list :Answer is provided to colleague

All of the content on the ‘How Do I’ (HDI) website was created and designed according to content design principles. As a result of the way LLMs work, without content design expertise, LLMs generate new content that is not subject to the same rigorous user-focussed design processes.

We needed to test how the AI was working to make sure it does not give misleading, unclear or inaccurate information. We analysed search data and worked with colleagues to identify the common queries they search for. This helped us to build an extensive list of test questions covering a wide range of operational, legal and safety related themes.

Testing and analysing the AI responses

When we tested the AI system with questions, we used the language our colleagues used. We asked simple questions and complex questions. We included spelling mistakes and abbreviations, then we analysed the AI system responses.

We took a content design approach and used our content guidelines to assess the responses. Validating the accuracy of responses included fact checking against the original ‘How Do I’ content to understand whether the AI had missed or misinterpreted anything.

We used this analysis to create a number of recommendations for how to improve the content of the AI responses.

Accuracy

Almost all the AI system responses provided information that was relevant to the question. But analysis showed it sometimes gave incorrect, incomplete or potentially misleading information. ‘How do I’ contains a lot of safety guidance, so to avoid risk for our colleagues, customers and business, we needed to make sure that any responses are always 100% accurate.

Accessibility

The initial AI system responses were hard to read because they were stripped of their original content design formatting and layout. Some of the responses also used language that sounded conversational, but added a lot of unnecessary words. LLMs tend towards conversational responses, which can result in content that is not accessible. It does not always get the user to the information they need in the simplest way.

Language

The AI did not always understand some of our colleague vocabulary. For example, it struggled to understand the difference between ‘change’ meaning loose coins, and ‘change’ meaning to change something. It did not understand that ‘MyWork’ referred to a Co-op colleague app. This meant it sometimes could not give relevant answers to some of our questions.

Using content design to improve the AI

Our Content Design team is now working with our data science team to explore how we can improve the AI system’s responses. We’re aiming to improve its accuracy, the language the AI uses, and reduce unnecessary dialogue that distracts from the factual answers. We’re also exploring how we can improve the formatting and sequencing of the AI responses.

This collaborative approach is helping us to get the most out of the technology, and making sure it is delivering high quality, accessible content that meets our users needs.

Based on the content design recommendations, our data science team have made changes to instructions that alter parameters for the AI, which is also known as ‘prompt engineering’. This affects the way the AI system breaks down and reformats information. We’re experimenting with how much freedom the AI has to interpret the source material and we’re already seeing huge improvements to the accuracy, formatting and accessibility of the responses.

Impact of the innovation of this AI work

“The ‘How Do I’ project has been hugely innovative for the Co-op. Not only in the use of the cutting edge technology, but also in the close cross-business collaboration we needed to find new solutions to the interesting new problems associated with generative AI. We’ve worked closely with Joe Wheatley and the Customer Products team, as well as colleagues in our Software Development, Data Architecture and Store Operations teams. We’ve been able to combine skills, experience and knowledge from a wide range of business areas and backgrounds to build a pioneering new product designed with the needs of store colleagues at its core.”

Joe Wretham, Senior Data Scientist

The future of AI and content design

AI has so many possible applications and its been exciting to explore them. This test work has also shown the critical role content design has in making sure we are designing for our users. AI can create content that is appears to make sense and is natural sounding, but the content needs to help users understand what they need to do next, quickly and easily.

Content designers understand users and their needs. This means understanding their motivations, the challenges they face, their environment, and the language they use. The testing we’ve done with the ‘How do I’ AI system shows that AI cannot do this alone, but when AI is combined with content design expertise, there are much better outcomes for the user and for commercial goals.

The content design team at Co-op have been exploring how they can balance current content design responsibilities with exploring skills and new areas for development in AI.

Blog by Joe Wheatley

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Using guiding principles to communicate user research findings on quick commerce 

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Co-op first started an e-commerce service in 2019 and rolled out delivery nationwide during the pandemic. Ever since, we’ve been trying to find out more about why people use this service. In 2023 the Food customer experience team started to focus on quick commerce. 

Quick commerce means something different to each customer. Our insights told us that some customers think delivery within one day is quick. Expectations in city areas can be much faster than that and closer to 2 hours.  

When we carried out our user research, translating our findings into guiding principles helped us to explain these needs to colleagues. We could then build and design the customer experience using these principles. 

Research focus and approach 

Speaking to users regularly has given us a strong understanding of their motivations and expectations around rapid delivery services. We have also learned about how behaviour differs depending on whether people are doing a big shop or looking for products urgently.  

All the research was remote, which allowed us to speak to customers from across the country. We did comparison studies, gathering feedback on prototypes and co-creating journeys with participants. This allowed us to understand more about how rapid grocery delivery services fit into our customer’s lives. 

Why we created guiding principles  

After analysing the research observations, it became clear that our usual approach to communicating the findings would not achieve our goals. Summarising the key insights would help us to understand what we’d heard, but not how to apply these user needs to the redesign of Co-op Food’s online experience.  

Colleagues recognise the importance of user research, but it is sometimes hard to know how to apply the insights to our day-to-day work. It was important to think about how to make it easier for everyone to digest what we’d heard in research and think about how it impacts our roles. 

It’s also easy for Miro boards and presentations of research findings to get forgotten about when we are often working remotely. 

The research findings were going to be vital for setting direction across the team, so we created a set of ‘guiding principles’ to communicate our findings. 

How guiding principles work 

The principles: 

  • have brought the team together around a shared problem
  • are actionable 
  • are memorable and easily referenced 

Guiding principles felt appropriate because they relate to different types of customers, across different shopping situations. They are different to traditional personas which focus on a single group of people and are not always flexible across different situations.  

“I think you’ve highlighted a real problem in the research space, creating TANGIBLE outputs”

Suhail Hussain, Lead Interaction Designer

 How we use the guiding principles  

Lead Interaction Designer, Sam Sheriston, designed a set of posters to illustrate the guiding principles. We printed some and put them up in our team area and regularly pin them to Miro boards to keep them in mind. 

The team are using the guiding principles in different ways. Our: 

  • designers use them to inform ideation sessions and the development of new digital experiences 
  • engineering leaders use them to communicate about the level of service we want to achieve 

We also use them alongside data and testing to make sure we’re doing the right thing and used them to present work to the Co-op board. 

“The design principle ‘seconds count’ was just referenced in the huddle, totally unprompted and not even part of a customer products update. That is success! Influencing people’s day-to-day language takes time but is so powerful.” 

Elise Nollent, Principal Delivery Manager
They’re on the wall in 1AS

How guiding principles are helping our customers 

The guiding principle ‘be upfront’ influenced us to explain additional charges to the customer in a clear way. 

When we thought about what ‘tell me how I could benefit’ means we added more content at the start of the journey, explaining why we need the customer’s postcode, and what the service is. 

The principle ‘don’t distract me’ guided us throughout the design of the customer’s journey.  We made sure we kept the customers main task in mind and focused on helping them to get from the start to the finish in efficient time. 

What we learned  

Guiding principles can be a great way of keeping user needs front of mind. They’re a visual way of representing what we’ve heard in research and keeping everyone on track. 

It’s not easy to leave out the details of our findings when we’ve spoken to so many customers and found out so many new things. It is tempting to want to say more, but keeping these principles short and snappy has had a huge impact on the focus.  

The principles are memorable, easy to remember and have become a natural way for us to talk about our customer’s needs. It’s also easier for designers to reference the guiding principles throughout their work. 

The team now use slimmed down components in Figma files to back up rational on design decisions

 
How you could use the guiding principles: 

If you work within Co-op’s Food business, you could think about how the guiding principles apply to your area. They’re relevant to all stages of the customer experience. 

If you’re a researcher or designer, how could you communicate your research findings in a more compelling way? How might you ensure that they are actionable and help colleagues to make decisions that benefit your end-users? 

The app and offers team have already taken inspiration and created a set of principles for designing interactive games for Co-op customers. 

Vicki Riley, Principal User Researcher 

With special thanks to Sam Sheriston, Lead Designer, for designing the posters   

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How user-centred design reduces risk for colleagues and our Co-op 

Matt Tyas

We’ve followed the Horizon Post Office scandal with empathy for everyone that it has impacted and is still affecting. It’s clear that the postmasters and their families were failed on many levels and we cannot address them all here.   

Looking at it from a digital technology perspective, it shows how important it is to build systems using user-centred design. Working in a user-centred way plays a valuable part in designing the right solutions for colleagues and customers. Listening to them, and questioning technology and processes, provides confidence that you are meeting their needs. It also mitigates the high-level risks and consequences of not testing or having active and open feedback channels. 

How we work in product teams to understand user needs  

User-centred design is based on understanding the tasks users need to perform and the environments they are in. It reduces the potential for us to negatively affect anyone who interacts with the Co-op.

We have specialists within our teams that make sure that our services are user-centred and delivering value to the Co-op. That value could be commercial, or creating efficiencies in how we work. 

Although skills often overlap, each specialism is an important part of a product team. Collaboration between disciplines helps us to consider everything within a user’s experience and design the right solutions. 

User researchers 

User researchers talk to the users of our services and provide insights to help the team make decisions. They empower team members and stakeholders to fully understand user needs and build confidence through testing. User researchers also help to identify and mitigate any problems with our services.  

Interaction designers 

Interaction designers are sometimes known as UX (user experience) designers. They help create accessible interfaces and consistent user experiences to solve user problems.  Interaction designers do things like sketching, creating digital prototypes and producing digital designs for a product or service.

Content designers 

Content designers create and organise information in the clearest way to help users complete tasks. They work closely with user researchers, interaction designers and engineers to make sure the content is accessible and easy to understand. 

Service designers 

Service designers design the end-to-end journeys of our services. They help teams to think about all channels to help users complete their goals. They align their work with business needs and measurable value. 

Product managers  

Product managers focus on the product vision, providing direction on objectives, strategy, the Co-op’s goals and wider market. They help to assess the value of work, prioritising it into plans that meet the team goals and contribute to sustainable growth.

Product owners  

Product owners translate strategy and objectives into tasks for designers and engineers to enable the team to deliver the product. In smaller product teams the product manager will also perform the duties of the product owner. Both roles work strategically and need to communicate with the team on how to achieve goals.  

Delivery managers 

Delivery managers enable their team to build and iterate user-centred services. They remove obstacles to progress, helping the team to explore better ways of working and deliver outcomes more effectively. 

Engineers 

Engineers craft the code that makes our digital products work for our users. Our engineers build software with users in mind and follow standards to ensure people have the best experience when they use our products. 

Quality coaches 

Quality coaches embed quality into every stage of product development, working with product, design, delivery and engineering specialists. They take a risk-based approach to tackle any problems early and deliver a high quality product or service.

Subject matter experts 

We work closely with the people who do the jobs we’re designing for (or the customers they serve). They are the experts, and we listen to their expertise and experiences, often co-designing solutions with them. 

Supporting teams 

At Co-op we take a service-first approach and the technology teams that support us make sure that our digital products are secure, robust and accurate.  

Why we start small and iterate  

We gradually improve products and services over time, which is sometimes called an ‘agile’ way of working. By using quick cycles of experimentation, learning and releases we can deliver value early and change direction quickly. If we learn something new about our market or spot any problems, we can fix it straight away and build everything else around a solid foundation.  

We define the most important features first, then work on the less important features over time. 

How we test to help us learn and improve  

We test to validate new ideas or create a better solution to an existing service. We use mock-ups, sketches, and other low-fidelity visuals like coded prototypes. By testing early, we can develop onto higher fidelity versions and products with more confidence.  

When we release products early and often, we reduce the risk involved in complex solutions. We also create value for Co-op and our customers or colleagues sooner. We test results consistently to see what’s working and what needs to be better. 

Why we collaborate and empower our team members 

We value collaboration and empowerment across teams. A product team owns their product and should be in full control of making changes to it.   

We collaborate closely with other teams and stakeholders to make sure that we’re considering all the factors that influence a product’s success.  

This means decision making sits closely with the experts of the product and its users, so that we can move quickly and gain the most value from our time. 

How user-centred design helps us avoid mistakes 

We make a minimum version of our work live as soon as we’re sure that it is working for our colleagues and customers. If a simple version is working well and doing what it needs to do, then we can build additional features on top.  

Fixing problems early or before we make something live, also helps us to save time and money. We avoid the expense of making changes on a higher fidelity product later. Most importantly, we minimise exposing our customers and colleagues to systems that impact them negatively or cause them harm. 

At Co-op we always want to do the best we can for our members, customers and colleagues. User-centred design is an important part of making sure we do this for our digital products and services.   

Thank you to the Content Design community and Customer Products team for their collaboration on this post.

Matt Tyas – Head of Design.

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New Co-op membership starts today

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Our new membership begins today. Our members will earn 5% back on all own brand purchases and 1% for their community. 

Picture of our new Co-op Membership card.

From today we’re posting 250,000 cards daily to members.  Every member will receive theirs by mid October.

If you’ve been following our blog you’ll know that we started with a trial for 750 colleagues in our support centre, followed by a beta for our 68,000 colleagues and council members which began in July.

58,000 cards have been used over the summer, generating over 550 pieces of feedback which fed directly into improvements to the service. This membership activity by Co-op colleagues earned them £323,278 (the 5%) and £79,222 (the 1%) for their communities.

Ten things we’ve learned 

  1. One of our biggest challenges was getting users to set up their new online account set up with username and password. The challenge is matching member’s data so they can identify their account. Colleagues found this hard so we’ve made the journey more intuitive.
  2. We want to hold open and honest consent and be a trusted data handler of our members’ data. We’ve been testing the best way to explain this to give members confidence and have made some improvements to the journey.
  3. We’ve added 4,050 local causes across over 1,400 communities in the UK. We’ve found that what matters most is different in each community and there are some great things our colleagues are doing already. We learned how best to allow members to select causes. There’s a lot more to do here though, including how we allow members to search for different causes – this is coming soon.
  4. A lot can change in the 3 month period during which we manufactured our new membership cards. A member might leave the Co-op or have passed away in that time. We’ve done everything we could to be sensitive to our members’ circumstances, and to try do the right thing.
  5. Through the beta we found that we’d configured the service alerting too heavily on certain aspects. We’ve now focused more more on the end-to-end service monitoring so we can clearly see the journey our members go on, and respond quickly when things aren’t as they should be.
  6. We’ve made massive changes in our incident and release management process. Implementing ChatOps as well as making release management self service so our teams can act and make improvements autonomously and frequently.
  7. Working closely with our colleagues in our contact centre has helped us to understand and respond to issues rapidly. 
  8. We’ve made some significant improvements in the resilience and performance of the platform. This has significantly reduced our transaction time: for example registering a new member at colleague launch took 3.5 seconds, but it’s now down to 1.1 seconds for today’s launch. 
  9. We’re removed our programme management layer that helped us to get to colleague launch and are now operating with teams led by product managers. We’re set up for our delivery teams to deliver iteratively and often. We’re continuing to develop our product roadmap for the months ahead, and have already set up a new delivery team for new services we’ll launch to our members in 2017.
  10. Colleagues are very keen to start explaining the new rewards to our members.

The whole organisation has been involved, working like a true co-op, in making our new membership a reality, right from store to support centre to development teams to service management. 

Thank you to everyone.

Nathan Warner – Senior Programme Manager – Membership
Dave Johnson – Director of Engineering

 

 

The Co-op’s response to the Government consultation on Land Registry – a follow up

At the Co-op, we’re passionate about how we use data for the good of our members, and believe that, more broadly, the UK economy stands to benefit from new services that are built on data.

That’s why in May we published our concerns about the Government’s proposals to move Land Registry operations to the private sector. We weren’t alone, with 65 MPs from all sides of the House of Commons joining David Lammy in urging the government to reconsider its plans.

So it’s a good signal that there was no mention of plans in the Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill that went before the Commons at the end of last week.

Let’s hope that the government has listened to all those who share our view that a commitment to open data has the potential to stimulate growth, ingenuity and innovation which are vital to the Co-op’s Rebuild and the future success of the 21st century British economy.

It’s important to us that our members voices are heard in policy debates, and that’s why we’re working on a way to make that easier in the future.

Mike Bracken
Chief Digital Officer

Hack Manchester

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We’re delighted to be sponsoring Hack Manchester the 24 hour coding competition this year. Organisations get to set a challenge and then teams of 4 people enter, choose a challenge and after the 24 hours is up present a working product. It’s being held as part of Manchester Science Festival on 29th and 30th October 2016.

It’s a fantastic way to get people to look at a problem from a different perspective and learn to code and to work in teams.

A picture of Hack Manchester

Here’s our challenge

Let’s tackle Loneliness

Arduino

We’d like teams to make something that can help people who may be experiencing loneliness connect with each other/someone. It could be something physical that can go in the front of a Co-op Food Store using something like Raspberry Pi’s, Arduino’s, or something purely internet based.

Background

The Co-op has a history of campaigning for a better society, tackling issues of concern to our members across the UK, whether that’s climate change, votes for women or fair trade. Last year, once again, we asked our members and colleagues to tell us what issues where facing their communities, and as a result we are tackling social isolation and loneliness.

One of the ways we are responding to this issue is through a Charity Partnership with the British Red Cross. We’re not just raising money but also undertaking our own research into loneliness. Already we know it affects many people (one in 7 of our own members and customers). It’s not just something that affects people in later life, it’s something that can affect anyone at any time for many different reasons .

The research will inform how we respond through volunteering, expanding British Red Cross services, through campaigning and through what we do ourselves as a business and employer.

Judges

Mike Bracken our chief digital officer and Danielle Haugedal-Wilson who is our business architect will be judging the entrants.

Prizes

PS4 plus game OR Beats Headphones & Sony Wireless Speaker OR iPad Mini
plus a bag of Co-op goodies.

We’re really looking forward to seeing what’s produced on the day. Best of luck to all of those entering.

Gail Lyon
Digital Engagement

We’re currently looking to recruit talented digital engineers/developers to support the growth of our unique business. We need people at all levels, with all kinds of skills and experience. If you’d like to be part of our digital revolution, find out more here.

Introducing Co-op Paperfree

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Hello, I’m Tom, and I’m the Chief Product Engineer at CoopDigital. That means I do a bit of writing code, a bit of design and a bit of pointing at whiteboards. I’ve been here since January, and it’s been an incredible first six months. There’s a brilliant, excited team here, and I’m proud to be part of it.

You might have seen Mike’s speech from our AGM, where he set out our ambition to be, amongst other things, trusted with your data. That’s a big topic and no small feat, but we’ve been working on an experiment to help us understand what it might take.

If you’re anything like me there’s a lot of paper in your life. It just keeps turning up: envelopes full of bills, bank statements, notifications about pensions, and so on.

Often they go straight in the recycling, but sometimes I keep things around because I *might* need to refer to them again in the future. So they get thrown into heaps and piles that move slowly from the kitchen to the stairs to the attic.

Many of the people we’ve spoken to in our research feel overwhelmed by their documents: information is never to hand when they need it, things get lost, and they take up loads of room.

We think we can help, with a simple, secure app to help you go paperless. Our working title is Co-op Paperfree.

paper-free-screens

You get your documents into Paperfree by scanning them with your phone’s camera. We make the contents of the scanned photos searchable using character recognition, so you can always find what you’re looking for without needing to organise too neatly ahead of time.

But Paperfree isn’t just for storage. We’re exploring ways of to make your life easier with automatic reminders for expiry dates, and ways of safely sharing with housemates, for example.

And of course, these important documents are increasingly digital, so we’ll be supporting those equally.

For most people this is some of the most sensitive data they hold, and we’re very aware of the security and privacy risks, both technical and social. We’re working alongside Sarah Gold and her team at IF, to ensure we put our users in control of their data. We’ll talk more about this in a later post.

scan-screen

So that’s a quick introduction to Co-op Paperfree. It’s the first prototype we’re developing in this area, and we’re excited to have a handful of our colleagues testing it right now. (Gulp!)

If you’re interested in working on this, or products like it, we’re hiring engineers, designers and user researchers.

If you are a colleague or a council member and want to find out more you can join us at our regular show and tell which is every other Tuesday 9.30 on the 10th Floor of 1 Angel Square. The next one is the 19th July, hope to see lots of people there.

Tom Taylor

Why we’ve moved to coop.co.uk

Co-op10 Comments

We recently announced that we were changing our web address to become coop.co.uk. We wanted to let you know why.

Image with coop.co.uk

Why Coop?

In the digital space it makes sense as it mirrors the new brand identity. It’s how the majority of our users find us when searching on the web. It’s also more user friendly when using mobile and touchscreen devices. Additionally, some social platforms do not support punctuation in a hashtag, so the “-” becomes problematic. For consistency we felt that it was better to remove it.

Why .co.uk?

We’ve found that .coop is relatively unknown to typical customers. Most are more familiar with .co.uk and .com.

Currently, we have many different web addresses and this presents a confusing picture. We felt the need to adopt a better strategy. That is consistent, sustainable, supports the brand and is easy for customers to understand. Moving to coop.co.uk gives us this opportunity. We will transition current and new sites into this url format in the coming months. It will allow us to better function as a group online. It will join up our businesses in a more logical manner and provide a better experience.

If you have any questions about this approach then please get in touch. Also for any council members or colleagues there is an open invitation to join us at our show and tell, every Wednesday at 10.15 – 10.45, on the 10th floor of 1 Angel Square in Manchester.

Nick Gallon

Testing Co-op Membership

Jack Fletcher5 Comments

To continue in the spirit of the changes being made to membership and with our renewed focus on better meeting our users needs, it’s been another exciting week for us. We’ve just given 800 colleagues in our support centre at 1 Angel Square , Manchester access to the new Co-op Membership service.

Richard Pennycook (Group Chief Executive) announced the changes at the 2016 Co-op AGM (Annual General Meeting). I’m part of the team ensuring membership is focussed on the needs of its users and we’re testing our updated service with colleagues first to make sure it’s right for when we release to all of our members.

Picture of the new Co-op Membership landing page.
The new Co-op Membership site

The service aims to make it easy for members to:

  • Choose a local charity to support
  • Make the most of their rewards
  • Manage their details
  • Register transactions
  • Order a replacement card
  • Get involved with the Co-op

By only asking for the necessary information to create a membership share account, we’ve also reduced the amount of data a user has to enter to become a Co-op member. This is one step towards Mike Bracken’s (Chief Digital Officer) goal of making Co-op trusted with data.

We found during our research that users are becoming more reluctant to share their data with companies and question how their data is being used. We aim to be completely transparent at Co-op and by listening to and acting on our users feedback this demonstrates that commitment.

User research drives continuous improvement

We’ve been designing the new service with our members, customers and colleagues, holding regular research sessions to gain feedback and insight on early prototypes and ideas. This combined with data from our existing websites enables us to better understand our users, helping to prioritise the next round of development and continue to improve the service.

Picture of Co-op team members carry out user research in Ewloe’s Co-op
Team members carry out user research in Ewloe’s Co-op

We test our designs as early as possible, sometimes we use interactive prototypes, other times we’re simply testing a sketch on a post-it note.

Sometimes, the medium you use to test a design doesn’t matter; the key thing is that you’re testing with real users, to understand what works.

In the lab or In-store

Most of our user research has taken place in controlled environments with pre-screened participants (lab user testing), which has been great for gaining qualitative insight and we continue to research in this way.

Sometimes though, we need instant insight into our designs, so we use guerrilla user testing methods as well. Guerrilla testing is a lean, low cost way of carrying out user research, almost anywhere, any time. We’ve tested our designs in-store, in coffee shops and even in the street, gaining new insight each time.

We’ll continue to test and learn with our colleagues over the next few months with the aim of releasing to all members in the autumn.

In the meantime you might just catch us in your local Co-op testing out some new designs. Or if you are a colleague or a council member and want to find out more you can join us at our regular show and tell which is every Thursday 9.30 – 10.00 on the 13th Floor of 1 Angel Square.
Jack Fletcher

What we mean when we say “digital”

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At the AGM one of the things I talked about was how digital doesn’t just mean changing the logo on the website and making some apps. ‘Digital’ when done well, means fundamentally redesigning the services we deliver, it means changing the way we work.

Here at the Co-op, when we say ‘digital’ we mean:

“Applying the culture, practices, processes & technologies of the Internet-era to respond to people’s raised expectations.”

Graphic with the text - Applying the culture, practices, processes & technologies of the Internet era to respond to people's raised expectations

Becoming a digital organisation means redesigning your services and your organisation, embracing ways of working that have long been second-nature to the best internet-era businesses.

It’s that simple – and that hard.

Mike Bracken
Chief Digital Officer