Designing a mobile app MVP in 5 days
Company
Walmart Photo
Role
UX Specialist
Timeline
2019
Overview
Business context
Walmart Photo is an omni-channel drop shipping business in the Photo and Personalized category. Customers can order photo prints, photo wall art, and other customizable photo products. The business operates via its own site outside of the Walmart.com ecosystem. As more competitors invested in mobile apps, I saw an opportunity for the business to increase sales by designing an MVP for our own mobile experience. I executed a short 5-day design sprint to demonstrate to the business team what a mobile app MVP could look like.
Problem
Losing market share, opportunity to expand platform
Walmart Photo was struggling to increase our market share within the photo and personalized industry. As top competitors such as Snapfish and Shutterfly were launching and investing in their mobile apps, I saw an opportunity for our business to do the same. When analyzing our site growth, we noticed that mobile web traffic was increasing by ~2x than years prior, while our desktop traffic stayed relatively flat. However, conversion rates were low on mobile web. This data showed us that while customers had an appetite to shop on their phones, the user experience of our site was not conducive to this experience.
How might we design Walmart Photo’s mobile app to make it easy for customers to shop products on their phone?
Process
Leading a 5-day design sprint
I executed a 5-day design sprint. This was the leanest way for me to spin up a design solution and present it to stakeholders with little to no resources. With Sprint by Jake Knapp as a guide, I executed a sprint with my team.
On day 1, I researched and defined the scope of the project and reviewed customer reports to better understand our users. I performed a competitive analysis by looking at other mobile apps and those of adjacent businesses. I decided to focus on the highest traffic pages and the checkout flow. On day 2, I mapped out the user flows and sketched out designs. I thought about ways that I could translate the desktop screens into usable mobile screens. On day 3, I refined the design. I transferred my sketches into Figma. On day 4, I prototyped the design in Framer. On day 5, I tested the design with stakeholders on my team and a few colleagues at Walmart.
Homepage
I designed the mobile homepage to reflect the web version, merchandising key categories above the fold.
Same Day Gifts screen
I designed this page to showcase our top categories, messaging pricing as this was a core factor in customer decision making.
Rollbacks screen
I designed this page to highlight key categories in a carousel component, allowing users to scroll and view various types of products within the page.
Impact
Shifting business strategy
After the design sprint, I showed the final prototype to stakeholders and leadership within my team. Although the specific prototype was never shipped, it served as a pivotal catalyst, shifting the business’ focus towards prioritizing the mobile web experience. This strategic shift paved the way for future iterations and development efforts within our mobile web experience.
Retrospective
Implementing more design thinking
Reflecting back on the experience, a major change in the execution of this project would be getting more time for this sprint to further develop the impact that the mobile app can have on the business and to explore more of the app’s functions and interactions to further demonstrate its vision. This would’ve have been a better way to generate more excitement and consensus around the project and could’ve have impacted our product roadmap. All in all, this was a valuable exercise that demonstrated to my team how we could incorporate more design thinking when looking at business opportunities in a lean and nimble way.