Grupo Bimbo: Transforming a Product Through AI and Empathy
Transforming a Product and Organization Through AI and Empathy
As a consultant with Antuit.ai, I led UX from concept through production for Grupo Bimbo’s global ordering platform. Partnering closely with pre-sales, product, and executive leadership, I helped transform a legacy internal system into an intuitive digital companion, empowering operators, managers, and delivery staff to make confident, real-time decisions in the field.
What began as a data-heavy, underutilized tool evolved into a trusted digital partner for tens of thousands of users. Together, we demonstrated that intelligent systems don’t replace humans or their judgments, they enhance and strengthen it.
Key outcomes from case study:
Over Seven-figure revenue impact
+70% improvement in product freshness
+21.6% increase in platform adoption
+28% increase in Task completion improved
+42% increase in User satisfaction
Client
Grupo Bimbo
Type
Product Design
Year
2024
Process & Solution
Role: Senior User Experience Designer
Location: Burlington, VT (Remote)
Engagement: 13 months
Business Impact: Over Seven-figure revenue impact
Scope & Deliverables:
Strategy, Leadership & Alignment
Led UX execution across strategy and delivery
Produced informed product roadmaps for leadership and engineering
Created design briefs for leadership alignment
Produced executive presentations with weekly check-ins
Mentored designers on workflow efficiencies and time-saving techniques
Product Design, Systems & Delivery
Delivered end-to-end product designs
Produced engaging, interactive experiences
Developed sitemaps, user journeys, personas, and alignment decks
Conducted A/B testing to validate designs
Established a scalable design system
Built an AI-enabled system that supports frontline workflows rather than driving them
Collaborations:
Worked remotely with global cross-functional team
Six engineers in Bangalore, India
Collaborating with Grupo Bimbo’s U.S. leadership nationally
Understanding the Problem
At the time, Grupo Bimbo’s legacy ordering system struggled to scale. It lacked transparency, data‑driven intelligence, and an intuitive user experience. The interface wasn’t streamlined or predictable, making everyday tasks unnecessarily difficult for frontline teams. Over time, those usability gaps eroded efficiency and began to impact both profitability and overall product freshness.
Key problems:
Information/Cognitive overload
Addressing UX Issues
Designing a scalable system
Goal
User Needs
Through research and field testing, I learned that frontline users needed:
A simple, focused, and informative UI that reduced clutter and cognitive load.
The ability to scan content quickly and find key details at a glance.
Clear and consistent call‑to‑actions (CTAs), and incorporating AI behavior and errors.
Business Needs
On the organizational side, Grupo Bimbo’s leadership focused on goals that would strengthen both operations and employee satisfaction:
Improve product freshness without slowing growth or adding extra effort.
Boost frontline satisfaction, increase accuracy and Reduce order errors
Shorten ordering time through a more efficient flow.
Integrate AI directly into the ordering process to support smarter, predictive decision‑making.
Bottomline, leadership wanted to transform this experience, to make AI meaningful for frontline workers, not abstract.
The Approach
Understanding Users to Reduce Information & Cognitive Overload
To design for the frontline, I knew I had to get into the field. Over twelve months, I visited 12 distribution centers across 9 states, joining ride‑alongs and observing how frontline workers and managers interacted with the tool. These visits gave me a deep understanding of their routines, challenges, and mindsets.
Through those conversations, I heard one phrase repeatedly: “Too much data, not enough time.” That became our design rallying cry. I used these insights to develop two personas, aligning user goals with business outcomes and AI capabilities.
The first version of ION, designed by an agency, was powerful under the hood, rich data, machine learning models, but wrapped in a clunky UI. My mission was to make intelligent systems feel effortless. I restructured the experience from sprawling, multitask pages into a guided, funnel-style flow that mirrored the rhythm of a delivery route.
This modular design supported AI-assisted recommendations without overwhelming users. AI didn’t dictate the result, it coached the frontline workers. It highlighted freshness risks, suggested reorder amounts, and dynamically prioritized tasks. We introduced clarity through clean visual hierarchy, bold CTAs, and language that matched how frontline teams actually spoke.
Streamlining Design to Address Core UX Challenges
The simplified designs created by the original agency addressed some of Grupo Bimbo’s challenges with the initial flow, but as with most "simple" solutions, achieving simplicity required navigating considerable complexity. To effectively address the underlying issues, I undertook the following steps:
Decoupling User Tasks
The original flow (see the screen above) consolidated multiple tasks onto a single page, overwhelming users. We restructured the process to allow users to start with a broader view of stores, then progressively drill down into more detailed product information. This approach not only enhanced the user experience but also provided the business with greater flexibility for introducing new features.
Collaborating with Key Users
I collaborated closely with an internal panel of managers who assisted frontline users in navigating the tool. The deep understanding of the user experience allowed me to iterate rapidly based on their insights, alongside conducting traditional user testing.
This modular design supported AI-assisted recommendations without overwhelming users. AI didn’t dictate the result, it coached the frontline workers. It highlighted freshness risks, suggested reorder amounts, and dynamically prioritized tasks. We introduced clarity through clean visual hierarchy, bold CTAs, and language that matched how frontline teams actually spoke.
Designing a Cohesive System Built to Scale
When I joined the Grupo Bimbo project, there was no design system in place, and the department roadmap didn’t allocate resources for component creation. To address this, engineers and I collaborated in an agile process to design and develop reusable components. Each component was built with a mobile-first approach to ensure scalability across all screen sizes.
Discovery Process
I conducted extensive exploration of various styles, involving designers and engineers to gather consensus. The outcomes were documented and transformed into a reusable component library.
Outcomes
Final Solution
The redesigned ION experience delivered measurable improvements:
The redesigned ION experience delivered measurable improvements:
35% reduction in frontline user errors, improving accuracy and confidence in daily operations.
40% increase in ION freshness company-wide, driven by clearer workflows and stronger adoption.
A scalable design system that reinforced visual hierarchy and built trust in AI recommendations, helping users quickly identify and resolve high-priority issues.
A simplified ordering process with fewer screens and clearer steps, cutting redundant interactions and minimizing error risk.
New overview pages that surface route and store health at a glance, enabling proactive action before deep analysis.
A strengthened information architecture supporting progressive complexity, making it easier to scale ION across future technologies and diverse frontline roles.
More than 20,000 employees, from bakers to DSD drivers, now find it easier to deliver exactly what baked‑goods consumers want.
Morgan Smith, VP of the Direct Store Delivery (DSD) Center of Excellence
Reflection
Organizational Change and technology
Adoption surged amongst the frontline once we reframed technology as support, not surveillance. When I joined the ION redesign at Grupo Bimbo, the goal was clear: help frontline teams use AI to make smarter decisions. But early on, adoption was low, and skepticism was high. The system was seen as a top‑down directive rather than a meaningful tool. I realized the real opportunity wasn’t just about the interface, it was about trust.
I worked across product and leadership teams to reposition ION as a partner in frontline success, showing in tangible ways how the tool protected earnings, reduced waste, and improved freshness scores by 70% across the company. Once we aligned the UX with real frontline workflows and communicated its value from both directions, top‑down and bottom‑up, ION evolved from an internal requirement into a trusted co‑pilot that empowered daily decision‑making at scale.
Empathy and evidence
This project involved the most user testing I’ve ever led, over a year of travel across 9 states, meeting and testing with more than 45 frontline users. I brought their voices into leadership discussions, ensuring every design decision reflected real operational realities. To bridge empathy and evidence, I created an archetype document that humanized user personas and paired those stories with quantitative data from Grupo Bimbo’s analytics team.
This combination of qualitative insight and quantitative validation became a turning point. It helped leadership see beyond metrics, understanding both what was happening and why. It gave me the credibility to prioritize features, negotiate trade‑offs, and guide a redesign that balanced frontline ease with organizational efficiency. In the end, empathy grounded the vision; evidence scaled it. That’s how we transformed AI from a mandate into momentum.
