My love for Nectar brought me here
I didn’t know anything about retail or loyalty schemes before I joined, but I’ve always been an active Nectar user — it appeals to my frugal streak — and as a bit of a gamer myself, I liked the idea of gamifying a loyalty scheme.
I’m Tiffany Chau.
My first impression of Nectar was that they like to explore the tech world and evolve. Some people might think that the business might be quite behind in terms of tech, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Nectar is a massive business and you can’t run one like it on old, outdated technology.
I don’t have a typical day, as such. We do workshops where we do work through concepts and improvements, and some days it’s more hands-on with design, and even getting the sketchbook out. I have calls with developers and designers too, which could be a catch-up or just getting to know each other, which helps when you work from home. In fact, I’m about 80% work from home these days. As long as you can do your job, it doesn’t matter where you work from.
The ‘Great Fruit and Veg Challenge’ was one of the most exciting projects I’ve worked on at Nectar so far. The main objective of the campaign is to encourage the public to eat more fruit and vegetables. Designing for social good and seeing many people enjoy the challenge gave me incentives to do better at my work. Also, working with a multi-disciplinary team has been great fun!
Throughout my time here I’ve worked with a lot of teams, built trust and improved our ways of working. We try to make everything usable and flexible — breaking down a screen to building blocks that we can use again. Of course, the customer won’t notice how much work goes into it, but that’s fine. If it’s good design, it should be seamless.
I like that we work collaboratively too. It’s fun to work together and find ways around things.
Sainsbury’s has certainly been supportive in terms of my career. We have internal meetings called ‘Design Time’ every Friday. For one or two hours we’ll get together and catch up. It might be about work, or maybe sharing our favourite design books or knowledge. And we sometimes do ideation too, just sketching out ideas. It’s a chance to find out what everyone is working on, look at things with new eyes, and having your colleagues doing the same for you. We also do ‘Good News Friday’ where you can shout out to your colleagues, or share good news. It’s a great way to end the week on a positive vibe and keeps us all connected.
