Project: Walmart Postpaid Wireless

Role: Lead Product Designer  

URL: walmart.com



Context

Cell phone sales on Walmart.com had been limited to unlocked and prepaid phones. Walmart wanted to tap into the phone upgrades business. Other retailers were doing this already and Walmart had acquired the technology to do phone activations and were ready to integrate this into their online strategy. 

Observation and problem definition

The existing cell phone category pages were disorganized. The taxonomy was outdated and keywords were unrelatable. I led our team in doing a competitive analysis of other electronics retailers. We simultaneously did an audit of the category page to determine what improvements we could make while still keeping within the scope of the project. 

• Fix the taxonomy to use more human-centered language
• Differentiate manufacturer from carrier more clearly
• Source better images to represent the product categories 
• Create consistency across cell phone images, so comparison was easier

We also had to account for an existing online reservation system on walmart.com. We had to find a way to elevate the discoverability of these “new to Walmart” upgrade phones while maintain the reservation system functionality as upgrades were initially going to be limited to a single use case. 

1. Existing AT&T customers, eligible for an upgrade to an existing phone line.

All other use cases like new lines, switching carriers or buyouts would be funneled through the existing reservation system. 

Solving all the things

There was a lot to tackle; discovery, category pages, item page, upgrade flow as well as integrating to the current reservation flow. In order to help the team understand the whole end to end UX, I created a set of user flows to help illustrate the use cases and some of challenges we faced. 

Once we had agreed on the use cases we began creating visual mockups for all the screens in the flow, took screenshots of existing pages on the site and began building an InVision prototype to walk the key stakeholders through the experience. We kept iterating on the protototype until we were satisfied as a team. 

Key Takeaways

This project involved many teams with a few dozen individuals dispersed across multiple states, so from the kickoff I knew getting everyone on the same page was going to be the biggest challenge. A deep understanding of the technology and the activation process was key to knowing how to design a seamless flow from beginning to end. As new use cases came in from stakeholders we had to be nimble and iterate quickly. Many team members had specific knowledge of particular requirements, but that information had not been disseminated in ways other could access. My work in creating a flow diagram and making certain all stakeholders were able to be heard meant that we were able to bring together a complex new purchase system quickly.