Guiding Store Customers
Walmart's Store Map: Bridging Physical and Digital Shopping

Company

Role
Senior Director of Product Design
Team
Total team: 14
Project team: 2
Snapshot
Walmart faced the significant challenge of connecting in-store shoppers with its digital tools to enhance spending and alleviate the burden on store staff. With stores spanning the size of three football fields, customers often struggled to locate products, leading to frequent questions for associates like, "Where is [product]?" This not only disrupted the shopping experience but also placed additional strain on employees. Shoppers needed an intuitive, reliable navigation tool that could seamlessly integrate with their busy routines, allowing them to juggle carts, lists, and children without frustration.
As the director of the Digital Acceleration team, I led the design effort, structuring and guiding the work to ensure that our solutions met both customer needs and technical feasibility. My role involved fostering collaboration between the eCommerce and Stores divisions, two areas that traditionally operated in silos. By championing cross-functional alignment, I worked to bridge these divides, enabling the project’s success. I also played a pivotal role in shaping the project’s broader strategy, facilitating communication among stakeholders, and ensuring our work aligned with Walmart’s strategic objectives.
Outcomes
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Strategic Impact:
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Released a digital store map that overcame the failures of previous attempts, thanks to a strong alignment between digital and physical experiences.
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Positioned Walmart’s app as the top shopping app during Black Friday, capitalizing on increased app engagement and customer satisfaction.
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Customer Value:
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Provided accurate, easy-to-use store navigation, addressing customers’ top pain points and reducing reliance on store associates for directions.
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Enhanced the in-store shopping experience, making Walmart’s vast stores feel more accessible and manageable.
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Cultural Influence:
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Strengthened relationships between eCommerce and Stores divisions, building a collaborative spirit that improved coordination on future projects.
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Established the design team as a critical voice in driving customer-focused innovation within the organization.
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Customers and the Media both took note of this new map, taking Walmart to #1

Context
Walmart’s strategy at the time focused on integrating digital tools with the in-store experience to fully leverage its vast physical footprint. With 140 million weekly store visitors, Walmart recognized that customers who engaged with both in-store and digital tools spent twice as much. The Digital Acceleration team’s mission was to deliver tools that enhanced this hybrid shopping approach, with the store map being a centerpiece of this strategy.
Key factors:
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Store Scale: Walmart’s sprawling stores presented a navigation challenge, especially for new or infrequent shoppers.
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Customer Service: The "10-foot attitude" pledge emphasized associate availability but added staffing pressures. A map tool could help reduce these demands.
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Past Failures: Previous store maps were inaccurate, disconnected from real-time layout changes, and failed to gain traction with customers.
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Collaboration Needs: Success required bridging gaps between eCommerce initiatives and physical store operations to create a cohesive customer experience.

The many layers of effort involved to build a functional map
Assumptions
To create a successful map experience, the team adhered to these principles:
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Work in Context: Prototypes were tested in real-world environments to ensure usability and effectiveness during busy shopping trips.
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One-Handed Usability: Designs had to accommodate the practical challenges shoppers faced, such as holding carts, children, or shopping lists.
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Cross-Functional Immersion: Engineers and designers participated in research and usability testing to directly experience customer challenges, fostering better collaboration and solutions.
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Alignment with Physical Stores: The digital tool needed to reflect physical realities, requiring close coordination with store layout and signage teams.

Research
The team conducted seven studies, including concept evaluations and in-context usability tests, to refine the map. These insights shaped both the design and the strategy for aligning digital tools with physical store experiences:
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Customer Expectations: Customers wanted the map to function like familiar navigation apps, with intuitive features and a clear user interface.
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Discoverability: Entry points for the map needed to be clear and accessible, as it was one of 12 new in-app features.
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Physical Integration: Logical store layouts and accurate signage were essential for the map’s usability, prompting collaboration with Stores teams to address these gaps.
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Iterative Testing: Continuous feedback loops ensured that both the interface and underlying data met customer needs.
Design
To deliver on the monumental task of delivering a new successful in-store map experience, the team
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Initial Prototypes: Engineers began development early, and design quickly iterated to align with customer mental models of mapping apps. Early designs focused on clear cues for product locations and seamless navigation.
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Iterative Feedback:
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Initial designs highlighted product locations with large, clear pins to ensure visibility.
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Iterative testing improved visual clarity, zoom functionality, and multi-location product representation, addressing customer feedback from real-world tests.
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Collaboration with the Stores teams ensured that digital layouts matched physical realities, reducing potential mismatches and customer frustration.
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Physical World Integration:
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Identified critical gaps in store layouts and signage that directly impacted usability, such as inconsistent aisle numbering and unclear directional signage.
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Organized cross-functional presentations to Stores leadership, using research insights to advocate for a comprehensive re-signing effort.
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Secured a significant investment to "re-sign" all 4,700 U.S. Walmart stores, updating aisle markers, overhead signs, and store maps to create a consistent and logical in-store experience.
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Coordinated efforts across divisions, ensuring alignment between digital and physical layouts to enhance usability.
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Improved the overall customer experience by reducing associate burden and addressing long-standing navigation challenges.
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Entry points: Iterative research and design tuned our entry points and defaults for search
Influence & Successful Delivery
A critical insight emerged: The map alone wouldn’t fix in-store navigation—store layouts and signage also needed improvement.
I secured buy-in from Stores leadership by presenting compelling research and a clear business case:
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Better signage = fewer associate interruptions = higher efficiency.
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Logical store layouts = easier navigation = better shopping experience.
The result?
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A company-wide initiative to re-sign all 4,700 stores.
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Standardized aisle numbering across locations.
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A massive cross-functional win, proving that digital and physical teams could successfully collaborate.
While economical, the old signage wasn’t easy to spot,
because it was sparse and blended into busy aisles

New signage was prominent, easily visible from multiple vantage points, and comprehensive to guide people through the store

Final Takeaways
This project was more than just a store map—it was a transformational collaboration across eCommerce and Store operations, solving a complex challenge that had eluded previous attempts.
What Made This Project Successful?
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As easy as searching – The map had to match user expectations from everyday navigation apps.
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Physical & digital alignment – The in-store experience needed wayfinding support to match the digital tool.
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Quick discoverability – Smart entry points ensured customers could easily find and use the map.
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Cross-team investment – A united front between eCommerce & Stores turned a once-failed initiative into a success story.
Key Lessons & Impact
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Design as a Business Driver – A thoughtful, research-backed approach helped turn a digital feature into a company-wide improvement.
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Collaboration at Scale – Close partnerships across engineering, product, and store operations ensured alignment and lasting success.
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Customer-Centered Thinking – Research didn’t just shape the map—it influenced broader in-store improvements, benefiting millions of shoppers.
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Advocating for the Right Solutions – Strong stakeholder relationships helped secure investment in store signage and layout improvements, making the digital tool truly effective.
This project reinforced the power of design as a bridge between digital and physical experiences, showing how thoughtful execution and deep collaboration can create lasting impact.