💡 WALMART'S STRATEGY

Launch Express Delivery to all stores in the US.

Hire thousands of new workers solely to fulfill these Express Orders.

BACKGROUND INFO

Understanding Walmart's fulfillment process

APPROACH

I started by looking at the current associate experience which had been live in a few stores.

Dissecting the qualitative data of associate complaints and using UX heruristics, I did an audit of the app experience.

It was clear that this experience had ux issues and wasn't designed to be scaled out to chain.

Summary of issues:

• Little user control and freedom.
• Lack of consistency and standards.
• No recognition.
• Not flexible and inefficient.

NEW OPERATIONAL PROCESS

After doing an audit of the existing experience, it was important to nail down the service task flow. I worked with my PM and Business Ops team to capture this.

This helped ensure that our team was on the same page and it guided my design thinking.

FIRST CONCEPTS AND TESTING

I worked with my UX Writer and created initial designs introducing tappable notification alerts that directed to an interstitial screen for the associate to interact with prior to starting their pick walk.

We tested this concept with 5 associates via Zoom. They each interacted with a web-based clickable prototype I made via InVision and we got some valuable insights.

Summary of learnings:

• The notification being tappable was well-received.
• The interface needed to provide more feedback on the status of printing.
• There was confusion on what the numbers meant.
• They weren't sure if the pick walk started or not.

A big issue I saw from testing was that associates were confused on what their process should be. So, it was important to communicate out the steps and what was happening in the background of the app.

1. Express Order launch screen
2. Assign the order to the associate
3. Print the label
4. Scan the label
5. Begin picking

At last, the designs tested well with associates, everything was technically feasible from an engineering standpoint, and we were ready to launch.

DESIGN SPECS

Use cases, errors, and more

Finally, as a way to help my engineers and stakeholders understand key interactions, I created this light design doc.

OUTCOME

Launched first week of May 2020

In 14 days:

• 0 → 7500 Express Orders per day.

End of Q2:

• US e-commerce sales jumped 97%.
• Revenue increased 5.6% to $137.74 billion from $130.38 billion a year earlier, beating expectations of $135.48 billion.
• Big opportunity to add a membership service. (Walmart+ to compete with Amazon Prime)

Launch Earnings article