SEPT 26—OCT 4, 2026
Atlanta Design Festival is a platform to celebrate, convene, & connect creative industries. The festival invites the brightest creative leaders and organizations to host installations, exhibitions, design and architecture tours, film screenings, conference panels and more, to showcase Atlanta as a global powerhouse and innovator of ideas. Read More
Designing In A Crisis
Instacart’s transformation into an essential service
On the evening of March 19, 2020, the first stay-at-home order in North America was issued in California, setting off an en masse move from in-store shopping to online grocery. Nearly overnight, Instacart was transformed from a convenience service to a truly essential one.
Throughout the following year, Instacart provided a lifeline for millions of families to get food on the table safely, while also acting as a flexible earning opportunity for 500k+ Instacart shoppers during the largest spike in unemployment since the Great Depression. By leveraging the Instacart platform and enabling delivery services, grocers and retailers were able to meet their customers where they were: online.
This unprecedented moment created unexpected, urgent, and complex design challenges. Jason James, VP of Design at Instacart, looks back during his ADF 2021 talk at the design thinking and principles underlying Instacart’s approach at the time and how they continue to guide their design into the future.
One striking example stems from COVID-19’s outsized effect on older adults. Customers over the age of 60 turned to online grocery last spring in record numbers to get their groceries delivered safely and reliably. Between the first and fourth quarter of 2020, Instacart saw a spike in the number of seniors using Instacart — the largest jump of any age group. Widespread adoption by seniors led the team to significantly improve the Instacart app’s accessibility by increasing font sizes, improving the contrasts, and making onboarding more guided. Additionally, Instacart developed a Senior Support Service, a high-touch phone hotline designed to help customers over the age of 60 adopt online grocery during the pandemic. To date, nearly 300,000 seniors have learned how to use Instacart with the help of dedicated senior support specialists.
Throughout the crisis, but especially in those early days, the team worked tirelessly to meet the moment. But even as the crisis has subsided, the Instacart team remains devoted to their mission to create a world where everyone has access to the food they love and more time to enjoy it together.