Walmart+

Walmart+ launched with my member account dashboard designs, and it grew fast. Third-party estimates put it at about 8 million members five months after launch and about 11.5 million by early 2022, with members shopping more often and spending more per visit than non-members. Before launch, Walmart’s UX Research team tested the flows with customers. People found the account clear and easy to use, and felt the W+ branding still belonged to Walmart. The Sr. Director of Product Design counted it among Walmart’s most transformational products.

What I designed

Shipped in the MVP

• Member account and dashboard
• Day-zero states for new members
• States for members without delivery access
• Account navigation architecture

Explored

• Savings, status, and progress tracking
• Several looks for bringing the W+ brand into the service
• Gamification and bronze, silver, gold, and platinum status tiers
• Trial extension survey

What I led

• Design of the W+ account from first concepts through the final MVP screens
• Architecture brainstorms with the Sr. Director on flows, next best actions, and small celebration moments

The opportunity

Walmart’s identity is built on one promise: save money, live better. A paid membership on top of that promise could read as a quiet admission that the free experience was never quite the best deal. The open question was what the Walmart+ account dashboard should be, and how to build it without undermining that promise.

There was also a bigger opportunity here: to help people in a time of need, worry, and stress.

Constraints

Walmart+ was the company’s top design priority. With that came a lot of visibility and pressure to move fast. The direction changed often, and we had to respond quickly, often daily, with screens that reflected each pivot.

We also had to design the experience while leadership teams were still working out what the benefits would include. Free same-day delivery, Scan & Go, fuel discounts, express delivery, text to order, preorders, subscribe and save, and early access to deals were some of the early contenders. Some of these features had larger, more fundamental implications that needed to be thought through carefully before we could fully execute them.

Launch benefits, April 2020

Walmart+ launch benefits, April 2020

Fit

Decisions

Exploring wildly and widely

I was the primary designer on the Walmart+ account and dashboard experience. I worked under creative direction from the Sr. Director of Product Design, but we often worked in parallel, and sometimes even in the same file at the same time. We were encouraged to go far outside the Walmart brand, with almost no guardrails. Product wanted to see as many different rough ideas as possible in these early concepts.

There wasn’t much to start from. Outside of Delivery Unlimited, there was little existing research, so I looked at competitive membership dashboards and at unrelated categories like banking apps, budgeting tools, social platforms, and fitness and gaming dashboards. The open question was what the “home” of a paid membership should be: part of the account, its own section, or something else, and how it would fit with the navigation that already existed.

Early concepts

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Early concepts

01/06

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Store home with search and scan and go 01/06

1. 01 Store home with search and scan and go
2. 02 Welcome back with store tools
3. 03 Store tools with a cart in progress
4. 04 Welcome back with the store map
5. 05 Thank you with points and hours saved
6. 06 Thank you with travel deals

Refining as the benefits and brand took shape

As we got more information on the benefits, and some previews of where the brand design was going, we kept exploring. The design continued to evolve, and we refined its overall treatment along the way.

Once the benefits started taking shape, the main decision was how much to show. Too many callouts, too much granular savings data, or too many perks on one screen made the regular Walmart experience look like the lesser option. I held the savings callouts back, so the membership felt worth paying for without making the free experience look worse.

Exploration rounds

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Exploration rounds

01/12

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Icon grid with a product header 01/12

1. 01 Icon grid with a product header
2. 02 Savings and member code
3. 03 Savings and benefits rings
4. 04 Member hub with activity
5. 05 Activity feed of orders and refills
6. 06 Lifetime savings by benefit
7. 07 Savings and time by benefit
8. 08 Points toward the next level
9. 09 Branded savings rings
10. 10 Branded benefits and delivery
11. 11 Branded dashboard with initials
12. 12 Branded dashboard with savings detail

An idea that didn’t survive and one that did

Gamification was already being discussed when I joined the conversations, and I decided to add an idea to it: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum status, unlocked by how much someone used their benefits. It went to leadership and didn’t make the cut.

A trial extension survey also came up in my regular syncs with the Sr. Director. It was a short quiz that mixed playful questions with useful preference data, and it gave new members extra trial days for answering. In the pre-launch study, people took it as a bonus.

Status tiers and trial extension

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Status tiers and trial extension

01/04

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Member status and next best action 01/04

1. 01 Member status and next best action
2. 02 How points and levels work
3. 03 Trial extension pick a favorite
4. 04 Trial extended with a waffle pick

Stepping back for design thinking

We initially started designing without hard requirements or a research or UX phase. Once requirements started landing, we stepped back to catch anything we had missed. The Sr. Director and I planned and ran UX and design thinking workshops with the team. They produced user journeys, next best actions, entry points, and how-might-we questions, and they shaped how the Walmart+ account navigation should work.

We began with the shopping journey: plan and prep, shop, buy, get the order, and repeat. At each stage, we looked for places to show members what the membership was giving them, like free delivery and the money and time they had saved.

Member journey

Walmart+ member journey

Fit

Framing the how-might-we questions

After mapping the journey, the team brainstormed around three how-might-we questions I helped write: how to show members the time and money they were saving, how to mark milestones like the membership paying for itself, and how to help members get the most from their benefits. We sorted the ideas by where they would appear, from notifications and chat to the membership hub and in store. Most didn’t ship, but savings visuals, next best actions, and milestone badges show up in the exploration rounds above.

Out of everything on the board, we decided the account would focus on two things: showing members what they had saved, and pointing them to their next best action.

How might we brainstorm

Brainstorm across three how-might-we questions

Fit

Mapping the architecture

An architecture diagram wasn’t a requirement, but I decided to make a rough one to sort out how the account fit together. It helped us see the sections of the system and the actions we still needed to think through.

It maps the path from a landing page to an account: signed in or not, an address on file, whether delivery reaches that address, a plan, payment, and then the account, with each benefit’s settings hanging off it. I boxed the address eligibility check in red, since a no there ends sign up and sends people to get notified instead.

Account architecture

Walmart+ account architecture

Fit

Testing the account before launch

In May 2020, four months before launch, Walmart’s UX Research team tested the account dashboard with 17 customers. People liked being able to track their free trial, and they found the cancel link easily. They also expected to tap into each benefit, and later versions gave every benefit its own action. Other findings, like confusion over what unlimited delivery covered, went into the design work already underway.

Narrowing down to the MVP

After the exploration, workshops, and testing, we narrowed the account down to three parts for launch: the core dashboard, the first-day experience for new members, and versions for members without delivery in their area. It was much smaller than the exploration rounds, on purpose. Anything that made it in had to be worth the risk to the Walmart brand.

Even at that size, it covered a lot of screens. The handoff had nine account states, from non-members and new members to members at six months, plus canceled and declined, each with and without delivery where it applied.

Learnings

This project took me back to my ad agency days, when we had to come up with as many ideas as we could with little to no information. Over time, we did of course get more requirements and direction.

I’m not sure generating as many ideas, screens, and features as possible is always the right way to work, but I do think it has value when you have to. As the old saying goes, add as much as you can, then take away as much as you can, and what’s left is the best design.