Case Study:
Walmart - Tile Takeover
Role: Director of Design
Company: Walmart eCommerce
Team: Internal, cross-functional (Category VPs, Analytics, UX, Product, and Business Leadership)
Duration: 1 week to develop concept and pitch; multi-year path to roadmap inclusion and launch
Background
During my time at Walmart, I spent years observing how customers navigated category and product listing pages—the digital equivalent of store aisles. I repeatedly noticed a structural issue: product grids behaved like dead-end aisles, forcing customers to return to higher-level navigation to continue shopping across categories.
At the same time, these “shelf” experiences represented one of the most decision-proximate surfaces in the customer journey, yet offered limited opportunities for contextual cross-merchandising or advertising beyond traditional product listings.
Based on these observations, I independently conceived a new product concept—the Tile Takeover—designed to improve discovery for customers while unlocking high-value, low-overhead revenue opportunities within the shelf experience.
The Problem
Product grids on Walmart.com functioned as dead ends, limiting cross-category discovery and forcing customers to restart their shopping journey to explore related items. At the same time, the shelf experience lacked targeted advertising opportunities at the moment of highest purchase intent.
How might we transform individual tiles within product grids into flexible, contextual surfaces that improve discovery, enable cross-merchandising, and create new revenue streams without disrupting the core shopping experience?
The Process
Opportunity Framing & Validation
- Mapped user navigation pain points across category and shelf experiences
- Identified shelf tiles as decision-proximate, underutilized real estate
- Explored cross-merchandising scenarios (e.g., TVs → furniture, accessories, services)
Business & Analytics Collaboration
- Partnered with analytics and category leadership to model potential impact
- Estimated cross-merchandising lift and advertising revenue in the tens of millions of USD annually
- Defined internal (cross-category) and external (brand-sponsored) use cases
Concept & Specifications
- Designed a system that allowed individual product tiles to be dynamically “switched” from products to messaging or ads
- Provided design specs and interaction rules to ensure the experience remained contextual, relevant, and non-disruptive
While the concept gained strong executive support, it surfaced a key organizational learning: I aligned with vertical business owners before engaging product managers, which created roadmap friction despite clear business value.
Results & Learnings
Although the Tile Takeover was added to the roadmap after my departure, it has since launched broadly across Walmart.com—appearing throughout category and shelf experiences and validating the original hypothesis.
This work demonstrated:
The value of proactively identifying UX opportunities tied directly to business outcomes
How contextual merchandising can improve discovery while driving incremental revenue
The importance of aligning product, design, and business processes when introducing net-new platform capabilities
Most importantly, it reinforced my belief that strong UX leadership sits at the intersection of customer empathy, systems thinking, and commercial impact—even when execution timelines extend beyond individual tenure.