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Walmart Case Study
Empowering item discovery with Gen AI summaries
Overview
I contributed to shaping the team’s vision for integrating Gen AI into Walmart and assumed sole leadership midway for one section of the project. By leading execution, I ensured alignment with business goals, user needs, and design consistency through a scalable design system.
Collaborating with cross-functional teams, we delivered AI-powered tools that streamlined decision-making in three months.
Goals:
Provide concise item overviews with easy access to details.
Reduce cognitive load and guide users to relevant information faster.
Create a scalable, PR-worthy use of AI to elevate Walmart’s digital innovation.
Role
Responsibilities
Collaborators
Timeline
Q3 2023
The challenge
Business Need
Use AI to help shoppers quickly evaluate and decide on items.
User Need
Streamline overwhelming item and review information while maintaining trust and transparency.
Item page
In person kickoff
Our team held a two-day workshop to uncover user pain points and identify opportunities to simplify the shopping journey using Gen AI.
We identified three focus areas that would ultimately evolve into three sections of the overall E2E flow:
Awareness
Improve and streamline search functionality for better item discoverability.
Consideration
Provide tools to compare and narrow down options quickly.
Decision
Summarize item and review information to reduce cognitive load and enable informed purchases.
problem to solve
Users face challenges in quickly understanding item details and reviews, causing decision fatigue and lost opportunities to make informed purchases.
quick_reference_all
Research
Gathering insights
Through competitive analysis and user research, the team identified pain points that informed the design strategy. I synthesized these findings to emphasize the need for concise item details, personalized recommendations, and transparent AI features.
Emerging themes
Essentials to know
Users need concise, high-priority item details at a glance.
Amazon: Summarizes the reviews, highlighting positive, neutral, and negative feedback.
Zoom: Summarizes calls and chats for easy review with AI.
Wirecutter: Grades key features and highlights what matters most.
personalization
Tailor recommendations based on user data and preferences.
Wirecutter: Recommends items based on specific priorities or budgets.
Google Maps: Assigns match percentages based on past visit history.
trust & transparency
Build user confidence with clearly labeled AI content and linked sources.
Google Search: Provides answers and recommendations with source links for deeper exploration.
Amazon: Links review highlights to original content for verification.
Amazon
Zoom
Wirecutter
Google Maps
Google search
Key insights and themes
These insights drove the prioritization of features and ensured alignment with Walmart’s goals.
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how might we
How might we leverage AI to surface relevant item and review details, helping users make confident, quick purchase decisions?
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Ideation
Multiple iterations
To meet tight deadlines, we prioritized rapid iteration, starting with high-fidelity mocks. Collaborating with Product, we refined key areas for the item page:
iteration 1
iteration 2
iteration 3
iteration 3 cont.
iteration 4
Co-design credit: Melina Sisaro
group
user testing
Testing the solution
Item summary learnings
Percentage match
Insight: Users found this feature less helpful for decision-making.
Action: Remove this section and expand the "Top Picks" feature.
Item details at a glance
Insight: Users often skipped this, perceiving it as a marketing tool.
Action: Explore different layouts and section headings to improve clarity and engagement.
Item specs
Insight: This section was well-received, with users most likely to pause and read here.
Action: Keep this feature and ensure scalability across all item categories.
Gen AI Module (Top half)
Gen AI Module (bottom half)
Reviews summary learnings
What reviewers said
Insight: Users still value reading full reviews, as not all trust AI-generated summaries.
Action: Make navigation to the full ratings and reviews section more intuitive from this card.
What reviewers said
Insight: Users did not immediately recognize the summary as AI-generated.
Action: Clearly label the summary as AI-generated and indicate that it provides an overview of all reviews rather than highlighting a single one.
Reactions to "Generated by AI"
Users had mixed reactions to AI-generated content, praising its efficiency but raising concerns about authenticity, accuracy, and ethics.
Positivity around efficiency & innovation
“AI is making our lives easier tasks, more streamlined.”
Concerns around human authenticity & accuracy
“Sometimes if I see reviews are generated by AI, I am like, is this actually a person that reviewed this? Did they, you know, use something to generate the review? Things like that... it kind of gives me a feeling of like, it might be a fake review.”
Concerns around ethical effects & data privacy
“They're underpinning their employees in my opinion, and then also cutting jobs, trying to cut down costs when they're already making a big profit there. Um, so if I saw that Walmart was using AI to power these contents and results on their website, that yeah, that would give me a negative view.”
compare_arrows
aligning e2e
Ensuring visual consistency
Light color strategy
The palette emphasized simplicity and trust, aligning with Walmart’s design language for a seamless user experience.
Item summary
Review summary
Dark color strategy
This option emphasized innovation with a bold palette, including a gamified toggle to reinforce a sense of transformation.
Item summary
Review summary
We chose the light color strategy to balance familiarity and innovation.
By slightly darkening the primary blue tone, we ensured it stood out while maintaining harmony with the overall experience
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Final Design
The MVP flow
The final MVP delivered a cohesive AI-powered shopping experience that seamlessly integrated into Walmart’s platform.
Full E2E Gen AI integration flow
Search results
nudge appears on scroll
refinement applied
Item Page
Item summary
Item summary cont.
review summary
aspect summary
Highlights & quick description
The highlights and item summary provide relevant, contextual details to help users make quick, confident decisions.
For those needing more information, a link directs them to full item details, which are not AI-generated.
At a glance
Displays up to six key specifications of the item in an easy-to-digest visual format.
Users can access the full, non-AI-generated specifications through a link at the bottom of the card.
Reviews summary
Helps users identify critical review insights, classified by sentiment, to aid informed purchase decisions.
A link directs users to the full reviews if they want more detailed feedback beyond the AI-generated summary.
Aspect summary
Provides an overview of user sentiment for specific features or attributes, with a filtered list of relevant reviews for deeper understanding.
Search initiative
Gen AI tailors the top-of-page categories to user search queries, adding educational content to help users better understand their options.
+3.62%
search ATC/visitor
+2%
item click-Through-rate
-1.81%
Referred item ATC/visitor
Design credit: Lauren Glazer
Design credit: Franklin Huynh
Comparison initiative
Introduces a comparison tool for evaluating multiple items on the search page, reducing the need to use the cart as temporary storage, enhancing efficiency and reducing back-and-forth navigation.
+2.62%
add-to-carts/visitor
+1.14%
new buyer conversion
-1.81%
removal of item from cart
monitoring
impact
The results
This project enhanced user satisfaction, delivered measurable business results, and established a scalable framework for future AI-driven initiatives at Walmart.
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1.1
%
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0.93
%
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0.63
%
What I learned from this project
rocket_launch
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