Walmart Baby Registry
A new way to gift and register using chat-based technology, an early form of today’s AI assistants.
I led a team through a Design Sprint to choose top ideas for our old baby registry. We built a prototype, in collaboration with our small team, and tested it with Millennials to prove the value of a new idea: a chat-based shopping assistant with personality. We named it Baby Bot, which laid the pathway to our launched baby registry and Walmart’s Sparky AI assistant. Launched in April 2019, this concept helped Walmart Global Tech improve shopping with conversational UI. My contributions included facilitating the innovation workshop, documenting the process, designing the prototype and vision, and helping my team create hundreds of screens for iOS, Android, and web. I love to work alongside my team to stay connected to the experience.
The Challenge
Earlier research showed that a complicated start and new parents' lack of experience caused low registry completion and small registry size. Automating the process with smart suggestions could help us double the registry size.
Design Sprinting for babies
This project transformed Design Sprints from an experiment into a Walmart staple. The tight schedule propelled us from blank page to a clear vision for the new baby registry in a matter of days—proof of the method’s power. This concept also laid the groundwork for innovations like Sparky, Walmart’s AI enabled shopping assistant. That’s me on the right!
During Ask the Experts, we generated HMW statements that we clustered into HL themes.
We voted on the themes, to prioritize the most important problems to solve.
Ask the experts included a look at primary research and the needs of new parents.
During lightning demos, I captured the main takeaways for the team on a whiteboard. The resulting sketches were helpful in jogging the team’s memory during ideation.
One of my favorite exercises, is crazy 8s, 1 minute doodles of stand out ideas and remixes.
The Design Sprint culminated in a 16-grid collaborative storyboard, a visual scenario that demonstrated our end-to-end vision and informed the concept prototype.
A view into our Design Sprint room shows the frames from a collaborative storyboarding session. The scenario we captured helped inform the InVision prototype and mock chatbot which I created using Bot Society.
The concept prototype was remote tested across 5 states, with 15 Millennial registrants, and 15 gift givers of diverse backgrounds.
We knew through data that only 25% of registrants were completing the existing on-boarding process which utilized traditional editable fields for due date, gender and other data. Inspired by a library assistant named Libby, I championed for a conversational UI (chatbot) concept so moms could text in their responses, mirroring the behavior or texting in-laws and experienced friends and family for advice on what to buy for the new baby. The “baby bot” concept was a hit in our customer interviews, and eventually made it into our MVP.
Participants liked the option to see personalized product recommendations based on their preferences - so long as they could easily control, replace and delete the items. Our central concept was a conversational UI, we later named Hoo the Owl, that collected preferences to help immediately make personalized product recommendations.
A popular feature with participants was pre-populating the registry with expert picks, allowing quick swaps. Time-sensitive moms appreciated this for easier registry building. With controls to swap or delete items, it reduces effort in finding products.
I partnered with the engineering team to create dynamic ADA-compliant color themes based on mom’s nursery style preferences, making each registry feel immediately personal.
Our merchandising and business team created highly curated product assortments that were based on the registrant’s answers to a few key questions ranging from the gender of the baby, to nursery style preferences from minimalist to trendy. New partnerships with premium baby brands came as a result of the higher bar for design.
We repeatedly improved the registry to give parents better control, make browsing easier, and allow simple logging of in-store buys. This led to better onboarding, larger registries, and more sales.
Better for gift givers:
Made it easier for gift givers to find available products and follow online shopping best practices. Shoppers can now link their in-store buys to the registry by scanning with their phone.
Better experience for registrants:
Hoo, the registry assistant, helps shoppers sign up quickly and easily. Shoppers can start a registry from scratch or get item suggestions from key baby categories.
There won’t be a pre-filled list automatically added anymore.
Suggestions will keep coming as the list grows.
Similar items will be grouped into dynamic categories as they’re added.
Improved management:
Easy options to make the registry public and share it.
Helpful recommendations are given during the registry process.
Clear tracking of what’s purchased, both for the whole registry and by category.
