North Star Vision turned into merchants and store associates' experience
Designed AI-driven recommendations concept that empowers merchants to seamlessly do product assortments & plan promotional events, across physical stores and ecommerce mobile/web applications. So that store associates full-fill their everyday tasks effectively in stores.
- Store Associates order products from mobile apps.
- Merchants set up products for Store Associates to order.
Design Highlights:
My Role
Principal Product Designer
Timeframe : 8 - 11 months
My Responsibilities
End-to-end UX for desktop and mobile
Liaison between business, product engineering, and design
Collaborate with Multiple teams (Business, product, engg, design)
Our Team
Assortment Team
Omni Space Team
Store Ordering Team
Merchants from various categories
Store Associate Managers
New product promotion team
Colloborators
Design manager, Product manager (3), Engineering (5 teams), Technical product manager (2), ScrumMaster (2), Business lead (3) Merchant and Store Associates, Accessibility, Living Design/design systems, Illustrator.
Below are the projects I worked as part of the North star Vision
The North star Vision concept I designed, won two projects for the design team, one is a mobile project for store associates and another feature update for merchant platform.
Northstar concept for product/business vision
Current State Analysis
User Research
Product/ Business Vision
Interactive Prototype
I studied the current state of the business/ product vision ( features aka promotional events aka item setup ) followed by user interviwes and studing the various applications and workflows connected to this project.
Mobile - Store associates order products from app
Current State Analysis
MVP for Mobile App
Iterations of Design
User Feedback
Design System Adoption
Led the MVP creation of the mobile app to add a feature to the existing flows. I studied the current flows to match the behaviour model, with feedback from users and engineering and business/product stakeholders.
Desktop - Merchants setup products from merchant portal
Current State Analysis
Stakeholder Meetings
Product/ Business Vision
Interactive Prototype
SQL - Translated to UI
The merchant portal was updated with item settings, which required the code to be converted to an UI and interactions. Started only with this project, but it expanded to a larger scope after design exploration.
AI Highlights
AI solutions I designed as part of North star vision concept
Sales Forecast
Predictive Analytics for Events
Category-level forecasts predicting sales and conversions for special retail events
Plan recommendations
Smart Assortment Planning
Automated recommendations of item assortment based on historical performance and category priorities.
Floor plan Optimizations
Intelligent Layouts
Recommended store layouts using data-driven insights to optimize fixture placement for increased sales.
Merchant Chatbot
Conversational AI Interface
Chat-based interaction enabling merchants to easily manage item settings and orders within applications.
Casestudy below
Northstar Concept for Product/Business Vision
Business Problem & Solution
Problem : Walmart's promotional products (clearance, discounts, events - back to school, christmas etc) are placed strategically in the stores and merchants do assortment for other channels such as mobile and web. These promotional products are called as "feature" items in Walmart, and these items have multiple applications to manage and assort them. Merchants have to use excel sheets multiple applications to plan and execute a feature item.
Merchants and Store associates faced :
- Data Overload and Complexity
- Time-Consuming Processes
- Difficulty in Measuring Product success and ROI
- Store Associates dont have a dedicated section to execute the feature items from their mobile app, while they can execute other items on the modulars/shelfs of the stores.
Solution : Business and product along with the design leadership wanted to explore the solutions to this problem. They wanted to reduce the merchants and store associates time spent on the above problems and make it a quick and easy solution.
Design Solution
At this point there was no budget for the business to do a full-fledged user research (Note : Walmart Design team has a dedicated User research team) and identify the exact painpoints, as this was a business, product, as well as user problem. By bringing in the design team as early as possible, I was asked to help with this situation.
To identify the scope and a design solution I followed the design process: I studied the current state of the business/ product vision ( features aka promotional events aka item setup) followed by user interviews and studying the various applications and workflows connected to this project.
Design Process I followed :
- Current State Analysis
- User Research
- Stakeholder Meetings
- Product/ Business Vision
- Interactive Prototype
- Test & Feedback
Proposed flow for Features Recommendations
As a merchant, I want to provide input for the feature so that I can see what the system recommends for the inputs I offer and then choose the best plan to order and execute.
Proposed IA for AI Recommendation Northstar Concept
Various iterations of process flows and information flows were collaborated with the stakeholders.
Early explorations
Various iterations of process flows and information flows were collaborated with the stakeholders.
Early explorations
Early explorations
As a result of the above UX activities, the interactive demo below was presented to the business and turned out to be a huge success for the business team as well as the design team. It was further turned into two projects for the design team.
Demo
Northstar Concept for Product/Business Vision
Figma Interactive Prototype
Mobile - Store Associates Order products
Business Problem & Solution
Problem : Walmart's Store Associates contact the merchants in the home office to place orders for their stores. There are many opportunities and situations where the store managers, and associates want to order the product themselves. For them to order themselves there was no application, it was added to the mobile app with the help of developers, of course merchants approval is needed.
Store Associates with the help of developers order items from a temporary web application, because of this the problems they face are :
- Not all products are available in the temporary web page to order for all stores or for their store.
- Not accessible to all store managers of all stores
- Product status is not standardized
- Notifications are not available on the status
- Transportation and delivery delays
Design Solution
At this point, it was very clear to all the teams that we needed a solution to this problem that store associates were facing. I was involved in creating the MVP by following the below process :
- Heuristics review of the mobile app
- Workflow/ task flow analysis
- Concepts and ideation
- Field visit to meet Store associates to get feedback
- Update the mockup and prototype to get business/ engineering feedback
Desktop - Merchants setup Products from desktop
Business Problem & Solution
Problem : There were many applications to plan and execute feature items. As identified during the north star vision concept project, the solution needed to be centralized in a single place. Merchant portal was a one stop shop for all merchants that lacked the feature related tasks and actions for the merchants in the homeoffice.
Solution : As there was a engineering solution already exists, the UI needed to be made simple.
Design Solution
Transformed a SQL-driven feature configuration process into a self-service UI for merchants, enabling direct control over item setup without relying on engineers. Design system adoption and workflow anlaysis to match the patterns in the current merchant portal were the highlight during this project.
From SQL to Self-Service UI — Translating Technical Logic into Merchant Empowerment
Before: Merchants relied on engineers to run SQL scripts to configure Feature Items. After: The logic was translated into an interactive interface, allowing merchants to manage filters, channels, and exclusions without writing code.
“This conversion removed over 200 monthly engineering requests and reduced feature setup time from 3 days to under 10 minutes.”
SQL Logic to UI equivalent
- Filtered store list via R0009N_ST_INFO
Dropdown or filter for store selection - Channel_MTHD_CD / DESC
Human-readable channel selector (“In-store”, “Online”, “Staple”) - Fineline Exclusions
Checkbox or rule toggle for exclusion criteria - Dept_NBR / ACCGT_DEPT_DESC
Dynamic department dropdown linked to live data - SRO/DRP filtering
Smart toggle or multi-select in item setup screen - SQL query run
“Apply Filters” / “Validate Setup” button
As a result, the below feature was implemented in the merchant portal for the home office merchants to setup the feature items, so that they appear in the mobile app for the store associates to order.
Demo - Merchants setup Products from desktop
Flow - Merchants setup Products from desktop through a Chatbot Assistant
Business Impact
• Total store promo sales estimated ~$25B/year
• Single application now, before, 5 different applications existed for store promotion planning.
• 65% of promotions set on time at stores
• New mobile app feature updated
UX Impact
•NPS CSAT +20%
• Screens & clicks reduced 90%
Time on Task :
•User/merchants accomplish tasks on one single application – 70 %
•Store Associates order from the app – 40%