Walmart eCommerce –
Empowering Item Discovery with Gen AI Summaries
Improving podcast discovery and user engagement through innovative design solutions.
PROBLEM
Review Overload
Shoppers on Walmart often face overwhelming item details and hundreds of unfiltered reviews, which leads to decision fatigue and wasted time. This information overload makes it difficult for customers to quickly identify key product insights and undermines their confidence in making a purchase.
Decision Fatigue
Users faced poorly structured item details and hundreds of unfiltered reviews, causing them to abandon pages before purchasing.
Cognitive Overload
Long, text-heavy review sections made it difficult to extract the “essentials” (top pros/cons) in one glance.
Trust Gap
When AI first summarized reviews, users worried about authenticity and accuracy.
Business Need
Use AI to help shoppers quickly evaluate and decide on items, boosting conversions and reducing bounce rates by simplifying access to high-priority feedback.
User Need
Streamline overwhelming item and review information while maintaining trust and transparency—allowing users to make confident purchase decisions without reading dozens of reviews.
How Might We…
How might we Streamline overwhelming item and review information while maintaining trust and transparency—allowing users to make confident purchase decisions without reading dozens of reviews.
Research & Discovery
Competitive & Contextual Audit
Amazon
Zoom
Wirecutter
Google Maps
Google Search
Amazon
Early AI-powered review highlights pilot, linking to original reviews for verification.
Zoom & Wirecutter
AI-generated summaries (calls, product features) demonstrate concise “at-a-glance” insights.
Google Search & Maps
Clearly label AI content and provide source links to build user trust.
Emerging Themes
Essentials to know
Users want top features and sentiment at a glance.
Personalization
Tailor recommendations using past behavior and preferences.
Trust & Transparency
Explicitly label AI content; allow quick navigation to original sources.
Stakeholder Workshop (2-Day Kickoff)
Identified three phases of the shopper journey:
1
Awareness
Improve search & discoverability.
2
Consideration
Enable quick comparison and filtering.
3
Decision
Summarize item details and reviews to reduce cognitive load.
Defined project scope: build an MVP for the Decision phase—deliver an AI-generated “Review Highlights” card on item pages.
User Research
Analyzed analytics on scroll depth, time spent in Reviews section, and cart abandonment points.
Gathered qualitative feedback: users skim long review lists, often miss critical insights, and feel less confident about purchases.
Synthesized pain points into “How Might We” statements—prioritizing concise summaries, clear labeling of AI, and easy access to full reviews.
Ideation & Design Iterations
Multiple iterations
To meet tight deadlines, we prioritized rapid iteration, starting with high-fidelity mocks. Collaborating with Product, we refined key areas for the item page:
Item highlights
Key strengths of the item
Item summary
Most important item information
Item specs
Technical details or measurements
Review summary
Overall content and sentiment
ITERATION 1
ITERATION 2
ITERATION 3
ITERATION 3 CONT.
ITERATION 4
user testing
Testing the solution
After initial iterations, unmoderated testing with 10 participants validated that AI summaries reduced decision fatigue but revealed clarity and trust concerns. Insights led to refining content structure, improving transparency, and adjusting how summaries were presented to build user confidence.
Item summary learnings
PERCENTAGE MATCH
Insight: Users found this feature less helpful for decision-making.
Action: Remove this section and expand the "Top Picks" feature.
ITEM DETAILS AT A GLANCE
Insight: Users often skipped this, perceiving it as a marketing tool.
Action: Explore different layouts and section headings to improve clarity and engagement.
ITEM SPEC
Insight: This section was well-received, with users most likely to pause and read here.
Action: Keep this feature and ensure scalability across all item categories.
Gen AI Module (Top half)
GEN AI MODE (TOP HALF)
GEN AI MODE (BOTTOM HALF)
Reviews summary learnings
WHAT REVIEWERS SAID
Insight: Users still value reading full reviews, as not all users trust AI-generated summaries.
Action: Make navigation to the full ratings and reviews section more intuitive from this card.
WHAT REVIEWERS SAID
Insight: Users did not immediately recognize the summary as AI-generated.
Action: Clearly label the summary as AI-generated and indicate that it provides an overview of all reviews rather than highlighting a single one.
Reactions to "Generated by AI"
Users had mixed reactions to AI-generated content, praising its efficiency but raising concerns about authenticity, accuracy, and ethics.
Positivity around efficiency & innovation
“AI is making our lives easier tasks, more streamlined.”
Concerns about human authenticity & accuracy
“Sometimes if I see reviews are generated by AI, I am like, is this actually a person that reviewed this? Did they, you know, use something to generate the review? Things like that... it kind of gives me a feeling of like, it might be a fake review.”
Concerns around ethical effects & data privacy
“They're underpinning their employees in my opinion, and then also cutting jobs, trying to cut down costs when they're already making a big profit there. Um, so if I saw that Walmart was using AI to power these contents and results on their website, that yeah, that would give me a negative view.”
aligning e2e
Ensuring visual consistency
We initially debated making AI content stand out but shifted focus to integrating it seamlessly for a cohesive experience.
I co-led the color strategy, ensuring alignment with Walmart’s design system while maintaining a distinct, recognizable identity. I explored scalable color approaches, tested variations, and presented recommendations to stakeholders, balancing consistency with differentiation.
Light color strategy
The palette prioritized simplicity and trust, ensuring seamless alignment with Walmart’s design language.
GEN AI MODE (TOP HALF)
GEN AI MODE (TOP HALF)
Dark color strategy
This option used a bold, innovative palette with a gamified toggle to reinforce transformation.
GEN AI MODE (TOP HALF)
GEN AI MODE (TOP HALF)
Color application
We chose the light color strategy to balance familiarity with innovation.
Final Design
The MVP flow
The final MVP delivered a cohesive AI-powered shopping experience that seamlessly integrated into Walmart’s platform.
Full E2E Gen AI integration flow
search results
nudge appears on scroll
refinement applied
Item Page
Item summary
Item summary cont.
review summary
aspect summary
Highlights & quick description
The highlights and item summary provide relevant, contextual details to help users make quick, confident decisions.
For those needing more information, a link directs them to full item details, which are not AI-generated.
At a glance
Displays up to six key specifications of the item in an easy-to-digest visual format. To ensure clarity in a text-heavy section, I worked closely with illustrators to rapidly create 60+ custom icons in time for launch.
Users can access the full, non-AI-generated specifications through a link at the bottom of the card.
Reviews summary
Helps users identify critical review insights, classified by sentiment, to aid informed purchase decisions.
A link directs users to the full reviews if they want more detailed feedback beyond the AI-generated summary.
Aspect summary
Provides an overview of user sentiment for specific features or attributes, with a filtered list of relevant reviews for deeper understanding.
Search initiative
Gen AI tailors the top-of-page categories to user search queries, adding educational content to help users better understand their options.
+3.62%
search ATC/visitor
+2%
item click-Through-rate
-1.81%
Referred item ATC/visitor
nudge appears on scroll
refinement applied
Item selection in search
comparison cards
Comparison initiative
Introduces a comparison tool for evaluating multiple items on the search page, reducing the need to use the cart as temporary storage, enhancing efficiency and reducing back-and-forth navigation.
+2.62%
add-to-carts/visitor
+1.14%
new buyer conversion
-1.81%
removal of item from cart
impact
The results
This project enhanced user satisfaction, improved conversion, and set a foundation for scaling AI across Walmart’s e-commerce experience. By proving the value of AI-driven summaries, we established a model for integrating AI into future shopping experiences, aligning with Walmart’s long-term digital strategy.
conversion rate
bounce rate
cart removal rate
found module helpful
What I learned from this project
Gen AI unlocks endless possibilities
This project revealed AI’s potential to transform shopping. By leading execution, I established scalable solutions for long-term innovation.
Trust grows through transparent design
Transparency, usability, and user feedback were key to fostering trust and engagement, with 75% of users finding the AI module helpful.
The power of balanced workspace
Effective leadership balances collaboration and decision-making to deliver impact under tight timelines and shifting priorities.