“In the beginning, what I really wanted from Slalom was a storyboard,” recalls Josh Wesolowski, who leads digital product and experience for CosMc’s.

When our team got involved, the internal team was making progress on menu ideas and starting to establish principles for how the business concept they had been given would translate into a meaningful brand experience for Gen Z.

Josh had created a service blueprint for a four-lane drive-thru experience, detailing every step in the customer journey and drilling into each one by function-what the CosMc’s crew members or “explorers” would do, what technology needed to do, and so on.

“That document helped build common understanding and alignment early,” Josh says. “And then Slalom layered onto it, making it much more tangible.” After collaborating on storyboards and experience maps, the united team had a roadmap for how each touchpoint should function in the end-to-end experience.

Menu and experience are two very different things in the normal McDonald’s world, and customization is not prioritized because the model is built for speed. But the CosMc’s experience—though still quick service—is designed for an occasion, that afternoon slump, and for younger customers that love trying new things and want to express themselves in everything they do.

“We built the menu so everyone could find something they loved within our target audience, but you’re not going to love everything,” says Sheila Hamilton, who leads menu and marketing for CosMc’s. “We also looked at customization through that lens.”

That meant partnering with Slalom to tailor the user interface for different menu items, narrowing down and prioritizing options to create the strongest possible customer experience. Customers may love the intense flavor of a Sour Cherry Blast with extra Fruity Popping Boba, but most aren’t going to want black pepper sprinkles or whipped cream on top.

By focusing on guided exploration, we designed customization that inspires curiosity and confidence, key attributes of the CosMc’s brand. Adding and removing options is easy and intuitive, with transparent pricing.

We always knew that perfection wasn’t the goal. “In the first week of discovery, I remember Josh saying this is the type of product where we have to hit 80%,” says Allie Renko, Slalom solution owner. “Not everything has to be 100%. Let’s just get to the 80% mark and continue to move. We can learn in the wild and iterate.”

Still, even for the pilot, everything had to be polished enough to earn trust as part of the McDonald’s Universe. A big part of Slalom’s workload was making sure all the features and interactions were cohesive across not just across the touchpoints we were building, the website and the mobile apps, but also those components that involved technology from other vendors, including the point of sale, restaurant screens, kiosks, pre-sell boards and drive-up menu boards. We also implemented key capabilities such as a full-featured loyalty program, payment fraud prevention, email and marketing campaigns, and content asset management.

“We helped to connect and bridge all of the gaps,” says Allie. “We were there on-site collaborating with everyone to hold the vision and manage dependencies and guide when decisions needed to be made to maintain momentum.”

"We turned so many things around on a daily, hourly basis for such a long extent of time across so many different touchpoints. I think a lot of people would love to know how a team can do that."

Tom Dahl
Senior Director, Slalom

“The team embraced customer research and testing,” says Tom Dahl, who led experience design on the Slalom side. “They already had it teed up. They made the plans and tweaked them with us and regularly opened the door, ‘Hey do you want to ask some customer questions?’. To have that be so intentional, especially on an accelerated timeline, is incredibly rare.”

For Josh, iterative testing was key to moving so quickly, along with the clearly defined vision and the focused, empowered team collaborating across functions. “By testing early and making sure we were taking action on the insights that were gleaned each time, we were able to learn through a lot of stuff really fast.”

We did low-fidelity tests, high-fidelity tests, and then brought in quality engineers to fully automate every release. The commitment to learning made the entire journey an adventure. “There were no assumed answers to anything,” adds Miheer. “We genuinely had permission to ask and challenge anything.”