McDonald's
A human-centered approach to transformation
Meet McDonald's
McDonald’s is the world’s largest restaurant chain, with over 38,000 locations in 10 countries around the globe, serving 68 million customers each day.
Challenge
Over a four-year engagement, Method partnered with McDonald’s to envision a new experience for every customer—an enhanced offering that is globally connected, locally relevant, and always convenient—grounded in an omni-channel experience.
Achievements
We defined the customer journey and the role of various channels at each touch point. This was supported by experience principles that crystallized how the iconic brand would express itself in a digital context. A global digital design system ensured a consistent and coherent experience across all touch points. A robust research process involving rapid iteration and prototyping in controlled and real world environments enabled teams to observe, understand, and better serve customer behaviours. We helped McDonald’s design and deliver operational service enhancements in front and behind the counter.
Our work has manifested across the global ecosystem in all digital touchpoints that a customer might encounter.
Service
- Service & Product Innovation
Duration
4 years
Capabilities
- Brand Design
- Data Design
- Data Strategy
- Experience Design
- Research & Insights
- Portfolio Alignment
- Product Design
- Software Engineering
Location
- New York
- Chicago
Laying the foundations for their digital ambition
Method established a series of frameworks to guide thinking and decision making on the digital ambition. These frameworks helped executives, product owners, and design teams with internal alignment around:
- What is the customer’s experience with McDonald’s today and how might we transform it?
- How might we build a relationship with customers over time?
- How might we evaluate the experiences we create and not lose sight of these principles when technology and operational complexities overwhelm us?
- How can we use data across the entire customer experience?
Making the ambition real
Additionally, Method guided the shift from a fragmented design language to a consistent, coherent, global expression of the McDonald’s brand. This shift was enabled by:
- A Global Digital Design System that scales across products — mobile app, web, in-store kiosks, and digital menu boards
- A global design toolkit that became a living repository of design at work
The secret ingredient: empathy
With Method’s help, McDonald’s moved from traditional marketing research to consistent inclusion of user-focused design research. We conducted remote and in-person global research across the US, UK, Australia, and China markets to identify opportunity areas.
By establishing the customer as a core ingredient of the research process, we leveraged iteration and rapid prototyping in controlled environments and in restaurant to evaluate the impact new experiences would have on the restaurant operations. Ultimately making customer empathy the secret to McDonald’s digital transformation’s success.
