Walmart Navigation System

Introduction

Why we are here in the first place

With over 10,000 stores located across 24 countries to say that Walmart's reach has grown far and wide would be a bit of an understatement. For many users this establishment has become their one stop shop for most if not all goods that enter their homes. This can be especially true when only considering groceries bought for the week. Walmart fills a need that will always exist for people as a location that sells reasonably priced food to its customers.

So why have they not tried to quicken the overall experience for their users? This question became the thesis for this whole project when I began it four months ago.

This project looks to bring more customers in an out of Walmart’s doors faster and more regularly by:

Creating a navigation system to help users get through their weekly grocery trip quicker.
Creating a feature apart of this that allows for users to find one off items quickly even in an unknown store.
As well as a creating a way for users to quickly reference when and where was the fastest check-out line is located based off their comfortability with self-checkout or needing assistance from an associate.

Executive Summary

Problems Addressed

Created a navigation system for users to find groceries quicker.
Crafted a way to implement this system to work with Walmart’s existing “List” feature.
Lastly, created a system to notify customers at a glance the quickest checkout line available to them at any given moment.

Competitive Analysis

Walmart is a company with competitors around every corner, from other chain grocers to more local stops there are a plethora of reasons for users to choose somebody else. What Walmart offers though is the convenience of being a one stop shop even if some of there methods for speeding up this process haven't been updated until extremely recently if at all.

User Testing & Iterations

Throughout this project, 3 main drafts were created to assist in fixing the problems addressed. Testing showed the validity in the overall ideas I brought to the table even if aspects of them were an iteration or two from being a total success I believe the foundation laid within this report could help shape how customers interact with all major grocers in the future.

Final outcome

From the start of this project my goal was to not only create a way that allowed for more customers to come through Walmart’s doors everyday. But also simplify this weekly experience for them in a way that will make them want to come back, whether that's every week for their routine lists or stopping by after work to grab an item or two I wanted to implement a few additional functions to an already robust system that with little learning curve would:

Takes away any anxiety that comes with looking for unfamiliar items.
Help shorten the overall experience customers NEED to perform every week or two.
Through both of these, create an environment that sees first time and returning customers become loyal long-term users. These users will come to rely on these features every visit they make as well as assist in helping customers choose Walmart over their competition.

Problem Statement

The Why

The current state of the brick and mortar grocery shopping experience has focused primarily on shoving shelves with a broad range of goods for any occasion. What the existing model fails to take into account is how lost and helpless customers can feel when searching for those one-off items or even for their weekly groceries. Our service will help address this by creating a way for customers to navigate from item to item on their shopping list quicker and more confidently. This change will ultimately shorten their visit but not what they purchase allowing for more customers to shop with less congestion

Hypothesis

I believe that by creating an experience that guides customers through our stores, I’ll not only be able to raise the number of customers that come through our doors every day. But this will also become an experience that simplifies their life in a way that will make them, more importantly, want to come back often.

Target Users

Finding All of My audience

At this current point in time Walmart's particular demographic that they focus on is white married females between the age of 55-64 but that doesn’t mean the entirety of their clientele even almost fall into this tight demographic. While some of there other competitors such as Target or Costco aim at a younger age group that doesn’t take away from the fact that everybody needs groceries.

With this all in mind it is why a portion of the goals I set for myself with this project was to try and bring back the younger generations whose time is even more valuable to them then a retiring age group.

Scope & Constraints

A few challenges needed
to overcome

From the start of this project I was faced with barriers I needed to navigate every step of the way.

To start I was a one man team working on every aspect of this project in tandem with multiple other projects.
From start to finish this project had a 4 month timeline I needed to account for whenever I did anything including work on other projects.
Another thing that was a small challenge to over come during the entirety of this process was safely performing in person tests. This meant precautions needed to be taken to ensure safety of all individuals present throughout this process such as.
Distance minimums being kept in account as well as face coverings.
Cleaning of equipment in between tests to help curb the spread of germs.
Lastly, Because this was being built onto an existing system, care was taken to make sure that new elements added needed to look and feel like they belonged within the original system

***Dark Gray Indicates Additions Made To Original Information Architecture***

Ideation & Brainstorming

Where I started

Ideation for this project began with my initial research into Walmart as well as some of its major competitors with the hopes of finding what granular differences there were between services offered. This helped me not only understand what specifically Walmart did but also, more importantly, what they weren't doing.

Market Research

I began by looking at what all services were offered through major chain grocers, whether in person or online, and began comparing these different services and how they appeared against Walmart’s current structure.

The Navigation Side

The incorporation of navigation quickly became my goal after this initial set of research, so I began this next stage by looking at what the pros within this field offer and how they went about delivering these tools to users.

Journey Maps

This initial research was used to help craft proto-personas for myself which would flesh out to become journey maps. All three of these maps started users with the exact same task with the only changes occurring being due to the personalities crafted through proto-personas.

This lead to more then a handful of insights that could have been carried into this project as well. But due to my timeline the scope of this project couldn’t get to out of hand.

Shaping Success & IA

The results of these maps as well as research is what ultimately pushed me toward defining my own success for this project.

Some of the insights I found which helped direct this project were.

For aisle by aisle shoppers why couldn’t we proverbially hold their hands from item to item?
For frequent shoppers that purchase much of the same goods, was there a point during the interaction where we could remind them not to forget commonly bought items?
For customers who might not be the biggest fan of self-checkout could there be an opportunity to notify users of the fastest check-out line?
For more power users who generally know the layout of their store could we help pinpoint for them where what they are looking for is at and what might be close by? What if they went to a new store?

These initial questions & research were used to help craft onto Walmart’s current IA which ultimately went through a few iterations as the fidelity and details of the prototype became more clear.

A selection of Lo-Fi Images

Design Iterations

Lo-Fi Prototype

While I new I would be building these changes onto an existing platform, what I didn’t know at first was how it would take form. I created for myself three tasks I wanted to see this initial prototype perform which would become hard measurements of success or failure.

These three tasks would be:

Searching for an everyday item such as milk and navigating to it.
Checking over and beginning a weekly shopping trip.
Locating the fastest checkout line available

Mid-Fi Prototype Iteration 1

Before moving to Mid-fidelity a user test & interview was performed using my lo-fi prototype. The majority of the issues that reared there head during this dealt with my navigation system I was wanting to implement, which for me was a huge success. In particular new icons being introduced as well as what details would be seen on the overall map or in the zoomed in view became the bulk of my new issues.

To account for these issues, AB testing would be performed on icons that saw trouble during this first test. As well as updates were made to the overall prototype to assist in cueing for customers what all tasks they would be able to perform with this new system without the need of a whole tutorial.

Mid-Fi Prototype Test results

The test at this fidelity brought a couple new interesting issues to my attention but also really helped in hammering out some of my troubles with prior iconography.

While overall the user didn’t feel much resistance going through her tasks, how she achieved two of them was not through what I believed to be the more direct golden paths I established but instead used round-about ways to find their goal.

In this iteration our user understood what iconography meant but either had trouble noticing it or overlooked it completely.

Current Solution

Current prototype

While in its current stage I don’t believe this prototype is close to being 100% solved what I do think it offers is a well of ideas starting to take considerable shape.
‍
Issues I still need to tackle deal with finding ways to call the users attention to these new features. While using them showed to not be much of an issue during testing it was navigating to them that still seems to be a small problem.

Atomic Design

Going Forward

Next up

During the next phase of this project the big thing I would want to push is focusing solely on developing the map users will see and interact with. In its current state while I believe it is perfectly usable I believe there is still a wealth of information that can be illustrated to users whether automatically or through interactions.
‍
The ability to perform usability testing on navigation in situ. Currently a prototype can only be so real, but what information or issues end up rearing there head when this product is actually being used in the wild would be the next set of problems I would want to tackle after updating the map.

Ux / ix

Service Design