How I reimagined Walmart Optical's eyewear shopping journey from 100% offline to an online digital experience driving +287% Net Sales YoY and +110% order growth.
Role
Platforms
Mobile, Tablet, Desktop
Industry
eCommerce, Healthcare, Retail
Timeline
7-9 months for MVP launch
Collaborators
Product designers, Product managers, Business partners, Design researcher, Engineers, Project managers, Analytics, Accessibility, Legal & Compliance & Field teams
Responsibilities
Northstar strategy, roadmap prioritization, resource planning, research, discovery, cross-functional collaboration, testing, iteration, end to end design & execution, eng handoffs, VQA
Goal
Create a best-in-class omni optical experience that gives customers confidence in their choices and makes it easy to find their perfect pair.
Outcome
The vision experience drove an 11% rise in PDP sessions, a 0.21bps lift in conversion, and 30% fewer order cancellations, signaling stronger customer trust and higher-value orders and a foundation to scale.
How I made it happen
Situation
Walmart needed to win first place wallet share where customers have begun to shift to competitors that provide digital offerings and servicing today - over $2.5 B opportunity.
Task
Design a scalable, compliant, user-friendly, mobile-first digital shopping experience from the ground up - guiding users from Rx entry, measurements to a confident purchase.
Action
Conducted user research to uncover pain points around Rx complexity, iterated to build modular flows, PDPs with try-on and fit guidance, simplified cart and checkout for clinical compliance and collaborated across multiple teams.
Result
Drove 287% YoY net sales growth, outpacing plan by $45K. GMV up 161%, orders up 110%, and conversion up 0.24%. AOV grew 11%, with returns and cancels stable, more feature enhancements.
Research & Discovery
Build confidence: 56% of consumers avoid buying prescription eyeglasses online
Make it convenient: The top barrier, especially for seniors (58%), is the inability to try on glasses before purchasing.
Focus on conversion: Of the 44% of shoppers research glasses online, only 24% complete a purchase.
At key project milestones, we prioritized deep user understanding - listening not only to what users said, but also uncovering unspoken needs and behaviors. Using methods like moderated interviews, user testing, PURE methodology, empathy mapping, and contextual inquiries, we surfaced actionable insights.
In addition to standard design deliverables, I created comms journey maps to identify key engagement touchpoints and enhance micro-experiences across the pre-, during-, and post-transaction journeys.
What some users said
“Since I have bought glasses before, my past experience is why I know what I need. It is helpful to see descriptors and then it triggers a reminder too (in case I forget to add something). If it was my first time it would be helpful to see examples of when these lenses are recommended like blue light glasses for computer users but for artist no blue light because it can change the colors slightly”
"It (inputting numbers) makes me nervous, and I have to always double check. If I send the wrong numbers, they might ship my glasses without me realizing…Something about uploading makes it fool proof”
“I'd rather use a digital tool to measure my PD over calling my Dr, but I wish it was all there in my card or my vision account online”
“One measurement was missing from the card, my PD. It was simple to get but frustrating. While I was ready to purchase, I had to call the Dr’s office. I shop at night, or after work hours or weekend, offices are not open and so its just annoying.”
"Upload Rx would be easier, I know there is less room for error, direct communication.Like doctors sending Rx to pharmacy, not asking patients.”
"Experience was easy and smooth. It showed good itemization through everything, felt there was transparency of information, lot of information but wasn’t overwhelming. I felt informed and in control of the shopping experience."
"I can try multiple combinations and customizations and know the price; I hate to ask the sales associate for every single customization pricing"
Collaborated with cross-functional partners including PMs, business teams, and engineers, to establish a phased product framework. The three large interconnected phases: online catalog , adding virtual try-on, customization, transactibility & prescriptions and, lastly, digital measurements enabled a scalable rollout, continuous learning, and integration of both internal and external feedback throughout the entire product builds.
A myriad of tools like journey maps, matrix audits, workshops were used to map the ecosystem, highlighting pain points, moments of delight, and key opportunity areas - helping align leadership and stakeholders around a shared understanding of the user experience and opportunities. Thousands of meetings, multiple design sprints, exhaustive feature comp audits, endless reviews and talking to users later, we laid the foundation of our end to end MVP experience that was launched in 2024.
Experience Design
This project brought together personalization, legal compliance, and operational complexity, bridging eCommerce and healthcare for Walmart’s first large-scale personalized vision offering. I collaborated with legal, HIPAA to securely handle PHI; and business, analytics and marketing teams to create a cohesive, high-impact experience.
By mapping complexity, aligning cross-functional partners, and continuously iterating, I applied systems thinking and design rigor to build scalable, user-centered solutions with measurable impact.
The work reflects a commitment to thoughtful design frameworks, continuous improvement and learning, and getting better with every project. A few design principles that helped make this project outcome oriented and successful were the following:
Rapid collaboration with stakeholders to define direction, ideate, and prototype fast.
Wireframes
Low-fidelity explorations to shape foundational layouts, get project buy-in and spark early feedback.
Reviews & iterative design
Scaled and optimized flows through team reviews, leadership input, critiques and ongoing usability testing.
Prototypes
Built interactive, end-to-end prototypes to validate experiences and test feasibility. See one such prototype
Shaping access moments
Created horizontal experience entry points to give users a consistent, engaging experience across touchpoints.
Bridging eCommerce and healthcare posed unique challenges, requiring close collaboration with legal and HIPAA compliance teams to securely handle personal health information (PHI), while designing Walmart’s first large-scale personalized vision offering
Rx eyewear was made discoverable by adding badges and filters for easy discoverability
In-view virtual try-on and making browsing more engaging
Immersive virtual try-on and contextually surfacing modules
Building awareness about Rx eyewear shopping and what to expect
Scalable design UI cards added to the design systems library and transparent pricing
Lens guides education to build confidence and users' trust
UI cards to make selections process easier and easy to scan info without being text heavy
Prescription criteria to help reduce errors and cancellations and accuracy in orders
Allowing selections to be edited based on user feedback
Making digital measurements onboarding engaging and easy
Making optical measurements accessible and easy to store for reorders
Walmart's first ever health+retail unified cart launched with this product release
Building at Walmart’s scale meant collaborating with multiple front-end and back-end engineering teams, project managers, and crossfunctional partners. As a ground-up initiative, the work required detailed redlines and annotations to prep final flows for handoff. This source-of-truth documentation served as both a design spec reference and a visual QA tool - streamlining communication, aligning cross-functional teams, and significantly reducing time spent on revisions, meetings and more for a best in class experience.
Detailed annotations and specs
Documented error states, variants and calling our behavior patterns while referencing the Living Design system
Inclusive and accessible
Ensured ADA compliance by rigorously testing and reviewing flows with the accessibility team, leveraging ADA guidelines throughout the process.
As part of an iterative, user-centered design process, this section highlights how we used usability insights, behavioral data, and product metrics to drive improvements. The goal was to resolve key pain points, enhance decision-making, and improve task efficiency – all while ensuring scalability, reusing existing design systems and adding net new solutions as needed.
Improving awareness with dynamic item pages
Before: Static product page with limited information and options.
After: Dynamic item pages introduced new features and expanding assortments, improving discoverability and user confidence
Empowering decision-making with immersive lens guides
Before: Lens types and uses were abstract and hard to understand.
After: On-demand lens guides provided contextual education, helping users make informed decisions.
Reducing cognitive load with interactive views
Before: Long, static lists of lens options with little clarity.
After: Visual previews and new layouts simplified complex choices and reduced overwhelm.
Scaling efficiently with modular UI cards
Before: Flat UI elements made comparison difficult.
After: Dynamic cards introduced visual hierarchy and supported variable data inputs with clarity.
Supporting multiple user journeys with adaptive flows
Before: One-size-fits-all flows didn’t account for user diversity.
After: Segmented flows tailored to different user needs, preserving consistency while increasing flexibility.
Enhancing selection speed with optimized scrolling
Before: Users had to scroll excessively to view color options.
After: Refined UI swatches kept selections in view, making interactions faster and more intuitive.
Results & Outcomes
What’s working
Customers are finding the site, exploring products, and placing larger-value orders - signaling strong top-of-funnel health and basket building.
+11%
increase in PDP sessions
Added non-rx and premium progressive lens options
Increased awareness & inventory
Stronger customer trust
+0.21 bps
increase in conversion
+287% net sales YoY, outperforming plan by $45K
+161% GMV growth YoY. Non-Rx and sun contributed 8% of GMV
+11% in AOV
-30%
reduced order cancellations
Better Rx criteria education and name mismatch addressed
35% > 70% adoption in digital measurements
1 > 2 photo uploads allowed
What needs work
Post-order experience (Rx submission, fulfillment, and guidance) is a pain point, impacting conversion, cancellations, and returns to an extent.
Operational issues (validation errors, delivery speed) need resolution to avoid long-term erosion of trust.
Content gaps across touch points still exist, slightly lowering the site’s completeness and perceived credibility.
Learnings
Collaborate. Iterate.
Learn. Repeat.
It's critical to have a learning mindset along with a growth mindset. Users don't often know what they need and continuous probing is necessary.
Learning can come from multiple outlets. Use tools and people to push the envelope and challenge status quo to get unstuck.
Partnerships accelerate progress
Momentum is built through open conversations, co-creation, collaborative problem-solving, and respectful alignment—even when it means saying no.
Investing in strong ways of working with cross-functional partners ensures that teams win and grow together.
Not every problem has a design solution
Designing for complex ecosystems requires in-depth understanding of players. Problems can be solved by better tech, improved service design, simplifying tasks and improving backend systems.
Low tech and simple solutions can be more helpful than complex and over designed systems.
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