Reducing food wastage with Walmart. retail through digital + service design

How can Walmart reduce surplus food wastage and drive grocery competition in Canada?

Reducing food wastage with Walmart. retail through digital + service design

How can Walmart reduce surplus food wastage and drive grocery competition in Canada?

Overview

Every year, millions of tonnes of edible food (nearly 60%) are discarded at the consumer and retail levels, contributing to environmental harm and missed opportunities for redistribution.

With its global scale and reach, Walmart has a significant opportunity to drive positive change in consumer habits and sustainability efforts.

To address this, we:

Created an in-store consumer awareness campaign to encourage in-store consumers to purchase surplus food, and
Designed a digital solution that recommends surplus food to digital customers
via the Walmart mobile app and website.

My Role

Design Researcher

Lead UX Designer

Tools

Google Meets, Figjam, Pen & journal

Skills

Research, Wireframes, UI/UX

Timeline

14 weeks

My Role

My role was a blend of user research, product/UX Design, and product management. Or, as I like to say, the Back of Design. Our team was comprised of;

3 UX designers
2 software developers

Process

Research, synthesis and strategy

Discovery

For our initial research, we set out to answer two questions:

What is the current state of food wastage in Canada?
What initiatives are Walmart’s competitors implementing to address food wastage?

Honestly, we knew zilch about this before diving in - turns out food waste is way bigger (and solvable!) than we thought.

After an initial synthesis in google docs, we moved key insights over to Figjam board and worked internally to summarize them for our first progress presentation.

For our initial research, we set out to answer two questions:

What is the current state of food wastage in Canada?
What initiatives are Walmart’s competitors implementing to address food wastage?

Honestly, we knew zilch about this before diving in - turns out food waste is way bigger (and solvable!) than we thought.

After an initial synthesis in google docs, we moved key insights over to Figjam board and worked internally to summarize them for our first progress presentation.

Syntheis & findings

Target Audience - Personas and Scenarios

We identified three (3) personas of different segments of Walmart's customers.

(1) Online grocery shopper, (2) Physical in-store shopper, (3) A blend of both physical and online shopper.

We identified three (3) personas of different segments of Walmart's customers.

(1) Online grocery shopper, (2) Physical in-store shopper, (3) A blend of both physical and online shopper.

Syntheis & findings

Interviews and Observations

Participants
We selected users via word-of-mouth at random. We asked participants the following inclusion questions:

Do you purchase groceries yourself?
Do you order groceries online or you buy in-store?

We also selected users based on our user types to be inclusive.

Participants
We selected users via word-of-mouth at random. We asked participants the following inclusion questions:

Do you purchase groceries yourself?
Do you order groceries online or you buy in-store?

We also selected users based on our user types to be inclusive.

Interview Script
We asked users the following questions:

Where do you purchase groceries from?
How frequently do you purchase groceries?
Do you use up all of the groceries you purchase?
Do you take into consideration ‘expiry dates’ and ‘best before dates’ when purchasing?

Interview Script
We asked users the following questions:

Where do you purchase groceries from?
How frequently do you purchase groceries?
Do you use up all of the groceries you purchase?
Do you take into consideration ‘expiry dates’ and ‘best before dates’ when purchasing?

Ideation and Sketching

The team analyzed the data that was gathered from desk research, user interviews and began to brainstorm (we even had a google doc. named 'thinking outside of the box solutions). We started the interaction phase with sketching to save time and course-correct cheaply and quickly.

Design Implementation

We subsequently settled for three features that would be designed & coded:

In-Store Campaign
Users in-store can sample cooked surplus food items and learn more about Walmart’s surplus center.

Surplus Center
A dedicated section in the app where users can easily browse discounted surplus food items available online.
Recipe Recommendations
Based on selected surplus items, users receive simple recipe suggestions to help them make use of what they buy.

Subsequently, I created the first Lo-Fis using Figma which we presented as a progress report and iterated based on feedback from stakeholders, and usability testing sessions.

We subsequently settled for three features that would be designed & coded:

In-Store Campaign
Users in-store can sample cooked surplus food items and learn more about Walmart’s surplus center.

Surplus Center
A dedicated section in the app where users can easily browse discounted surplus food items available online.
Recipe Recommendations
Based on selected surplus items, users receive simple recipe suggestions to help them make use of what they buy.

Subsequently, I created the first Lo-Fis using Figma which we presented as a progress report and iterated based on feedback from stakeholders, and usability testing sessions.

Design Screens

We knew that mobile users are very goal-oriented and super impatient. So, we decided to keep our homepage and marketing materials simple. we made sure that we have a clear call-to-action and a value proposition above the fold.

Users will be able to shop surplus food items (foods nearing their expiry or best-before dates). It's also an efficient way for Walmart to make room for new inventory. The app will display AI-generated recipe suggestions for each surplus food item. You can preview here

Marketing materials (In-store)

Usability Testing

I created the research plan to observe the behaviors of a subsection of representative users while performing tasks for both in-store and mobile channels. We have created mid-fidelity prototypes in Figma and created three tasks to be observed, which included the following tasks.

Findings

Users were able to find surplus food items but struggled with unclear feedback when adding items to the cart. Important details like expiry dates and pickup-only notices were easily missed. Participants found the horizontal scrolling for categories confusing.

For the recipe feature, users had difficulty understanding the transition from scanning a barcode to viewing a recipe. They often mistook the scanning tool for a regular photo feature. However, once users reached the recipe cards, the experience was straightforward.

Users found sorting for deals intuitive and easy to navigate, suggesting that deal-finding functionality met expectations.

Reflection

Working on this project re-emphasized for us that to make the design process a success, it is essential to understand the user goals and use that understanding in the creation of a design solution. Asking real users helped us in improving bits and pieces of the whole project. In the end we were able to build a product that is super easy to use and really helpful in tackling food wastage in Canada.