[Watch]: Patrick Jean shares what it’s like to be at the helm of design at Grab

“Sometimes those changes are about incrementally honing and refining the experience. And it’s only after looking back a couple of years that, you see how much the experience has changed,” he said.

(Read more: Grab launches new tech podcast series, Grab a Seat)

Designing new experiences

Really big, new product launches require careful consideration and planning to ease users into the experience.

An example Jean cited was the roll out of Family Account—a feature that makes keeping track of and paying for family members’ rides much easier. This is especially useful for less tech-savvy members of the family. 

Family Account required allowing the app to evolve beyond a product that users interact with individually, into a shared experience.

(Watch: Product Head of Geo Maps shares how Grab developed its own mapping solutions)

Designing at scale

The challenge of design at Grab is the sheer scale of it, said Jean, adding that it was important to ensure cohesiveness and consistency even if there are many people working on different parts of the app experience. 

The last thing you want is to open up the app and it feels like there are many different teams working on it, said Jean. 

“Design at that scale is really a team sport—it’s not the individual accomplishment as much as the collective achievement of shipping a product that is deeply customer-centric,” he added.

Watch the full video or tune in to the podcast as Jean shares more about the role design plays in product development at Grab. 

The Grab a Seat podcast is available to listeners on 30 streaming platforms including Apple, Spotify and YouTube.

New episodes launch on a weekly basis.