While at Accenture, Restaurant Brands International approached us with an incredibly ambitious project—work with Tim Hortons to concept the future of Canadian commerce. This left us scratching our heads for a bit until we began to understand how Tim Hortons has been preparing themselves for a big entry into the financial market for years. Having previously tried to accomplish this through partnerships, the potential move towards open banking in Canada would allow Tim Hortons to fully own their own financial product.

I managed a cross-functional team of Business Strategists, Service Designers, and Product Designers to develop an ambitious roadmap that would transform the current state Tim Hortons mobile experience into a fully-fledged superapp. This began with the introduction of what is now known as Tims Financial—a credit product that is deeply integrated into the Tims Rewards loyalty program. Additional services would evolve out of the experience, from Mortgage and lending products, to eCommerce, and through to gaming. Each of these products was ultimately tied back loyalty and data collection.

After the initial visioning, strategy, and roadmap, our team began to develop an MVP that would become a future release of the Tim Hortons mobile app. This updated experience began to introduce the ‘quick action’ and tile patterns that would be the foundation for the future-state superapp. The UX put emphasis on two key behaviours: ordering and loyalty. A weather integration was added to be a soft push towards more robust services, but also to give legitimacy to contextual ordering and offers (eg. hotter days may feature promos on iced capps, whereas colder days may feature soups).

Because the new update was going to be a complete rebuild, our team laid the groundwork for a robust new design system built on design tokens. This new visual update aimed to bring a sense of joy and comfort to the legacy brand’s experience. For example, instead of opting for a traditional approach to light mode and dark mode, we drew inspiration from the Tims product line and opted for a light roast and dark roast colour theme.