Revolutionising retail design: Coles Group's transformation with Figma

Time to read: 4.5 minutes

Summary: Coles Group, one of Australia’s largest retailers, transformed its design process with Figma. Before 2021, fragmented tools and inconsistent collaboration led to design challenges. With Figma, Coles’ teams now work together in real-time, ensuring design consistency across platforms. FigJam has also boosted collaboration, bringing more voices into the design process. This shift has improved efficiency, reduced disruptions, and streamlined Coles’ operations.

Coles Group, one of Australia’s leading retailers, operates more than 1,800 outlets nationwide. It includes a suite of brands, including Coles Supermarkets, Coles Online, Liquorland, First Choice Liquor, Coles Financial Services, and more.

At the heart of all of this sits the Coles Digital Team. They have a simple goal: create a design and digital experience that connects customers to the Coles’ brand and helps the business run smoothly. The team includes accessibility, content design, design research, service design and product design. Together, they manage everything from the core app and web experience to bespoke applications, including the click-and-collect and delivery experiences.

The sheer scale and diversity of Coles’ platforms mean the Coles Digital team faces a formidable challenge. “Designing at scale, amidst the organisational complexities, while crafting exceptional and connected digital experience is no small feat,” says Nathan Streater, Coles Digital Group Designer Manager. The team has to design for “everyone and everything”, he says, while still ensuring uniformity and precision across the digital landscape.

The stakes are high. Even a minor design misstep can lead to in-store mix-ups, production delays, logistical hurdles, and a barrage of calls to the customer service centre.

To deal with the complexity, Coles Digital needs a high degree of collaboration and transparency. “Encouraging collaboration across departments can be easier said than done. However, we've found the solution in Figma,” Nathan says.

Sketches, screenshots, and struggles: Coles Group's pre-Figma era

Coles Group first started using Figma in 2021 when it merged its content and ecommerce websites, and found that it revolutionised its design process, delivering the real-time collaboration and transparency its designers and other team members desperately needed.

Prior to that, Coles had a fragmented design process spread across multiple tools and external agencies.

“We used to work with multiple outside agencies for specific design tasks,” says Nathan, “We didn't have a ‘source of truth’ for design files, often resulting in duplication of Sketch files, and it was a struggle to maintain design consistency.”

This led to fragmented documentation and less transparency and made collaboration harder. Clashes in design components and hierarchies would trip up projects as they went into production.

The lack of a unified design canvas made it hard to anticipate the impact of different design choices, and that meant many costly last-minute adjustments.

On top of that, the design team had to coordinate with other departments at Coles Group. Going back and forth between departments made it challenging to keep track of feedback and changes.

How Coles Group ignited a new era of design collaboration with Figma

With Figma, everyone is now on the same page, making it easier to track feedback and make changes as needed.

“Our teams can now simultaneously view and make changes to designs, allowing us to communicate more efficiently,” says Eric Lorenzo, Coles Group Design Operations Coordinator.

With even small changes having the potential to disrupt the business and its customers, Coles Digital also needed a tool that would ensure design consistency across the vast Coles Group portfolio.

Every design decision needs to be transparent, evaluated, and tested, and Figma's centralised design system has become crucial in enforcing a uniform design language across projects and teams at Coles Digital.

FigJam: Elevating Coles Group's collaboration game

Collaboration now happens right from the beginning of Coles Digital projects. Its teams use Figma’s online brainstorming tool FigJam to ideate, develop, and organise ideas. FigJam helps streamline kickoffs and workshops, simplifying the overarching design process.

“The transparent setup in FigJam fosters understanding and collaborative learning. We can seamlessly dive into a design file, discuss, and co-create in real-time, even in remote sessions with different departments and teams in the company,” Nathan says.

Cole’s design process starts on a FigJam board where all ideas are explored—from competitive analysis, platform analytics, research insights, to ideas from various stakeholders.

FigJam has also helped Coles to open up its design process to more people including business stakeholders and even the Chief Digital Officer.

“Everybody gets to say their piece at the start and then the team starts to work through it. It's been a game-changer, and we spend a couple of hours each week in these co-creation huddles and design critiques,” says Nathan.

Collaboration and feedback continue with fidelity and confidence check-ins as designs progress. This process covers everything, including design, product, and technical aspects of the project.

FigJam also empowers Coles’ design team by enabling collaboration and feedback from an open audience of project stakeholders for 24 hours. This helps capture everyone’s ideas and insights, enabling a sense of ownership and accountability for every stakeholder.

Why Coles Group chose Figma and FigJam:

• Collaboration and visibility: Figma's cloud-based platform and integrated features created a culture of collaboration and transparency among teams. It helped standardise collaboration practices and made file structure management more efficient.
• Streamlined processes: Figma's seamless workflows transformed how the design team at Coles collaborates. They now allocate a few hours each week to remote co-creation huddles.
• Unified tools: Figma helps Coles simplify its toolset to reduce the use of multiple apps.
• Empowering non-designers: Figma's user-friendly interface and collaborative features helped Coles engage other stakeholders from various departments in the design process.
• Improving alignment: Figma makes brainstorming and ideation simple, helping Coles define ideas, align on decisions, and move work forward.

Coles Group's promising future with Figma

Coles’ design ethos has come a long way. It’s left behind siloed design processes, fragmented communication, and a lack of centralised control to embrace a more strategic and intentional design. In the process, it’s gained better design outcomes and reduced the risk of business disruption.

Figma has been instrumental in this change. With a unified canvas, the design team at Coles Digital can champion transparency and standardised design practices right across Coles’ operations.

With FigJam also deeply ingrained in its design process, everyone is empowered to share and explore ideas and work towards a common vision, designers and non-designers alike.

Reflecting on this transformative journey, Nathan says, “I don't even want to imagine what our design and collaborative work would look like without Figma.”