Walmart Learning
TL;DR
Redesigning Walmart's learning experience to help associates prioritize training, discover growth opportunities, and navigate learning more intuitively.
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
TIMELINE
CATEGORY
SERVICES
User Research · UX Strategy · Product Design
Background
One company, too many places to learn
Walmart was consolidating its legacy learning platforms into a single unified experience. Learning was fragmented across multiple systems — creating confusion about where learning lived, what mattered most, and how any of it connected to career growth. Most associates had come to see learning as compliance, not development.
“There are too many places to go, and I'm never sure which one is right.”
— Heard again and again from associates
Learning was scattered across LiveBetterU, Walmart Academy, My Walmart, and OneWalmart — each with its own structure and entry point.
The challenge
It wasn't a consolidation problem
The initial assessment pointed at platform fragmentation. But research revealed something deeper: learning experiences were disconnected from how associates actually worked, learned, and developed.
FIELD ASSOCIATES
Need fast, role-based support in the flow of work — short windows, sales floor context, mobile in hand.
Home office ASSOCIATES
Focus on long-term development — skills, certifications, and career pathways over time.
The challenge shifted from
consolidating platforms to
designing for both immediate needs and future growth.
Research
Going where the learning happens
To understand the real behavior behind the symptoms, research went into stores and across roles.
Store visits
Associate Interviews
Manager & people lead interviews
Usability Testing
Field visit research: learning directly from associates and managers about their current learning experiences.
Stores rely on printed guides to navigate fragmented systems.
What we learned
Learning was viewed as a task to complete.
Most associates focused only on required training.
Operational realities shaped learning behavior.
Store associates had limited uninterrupted learning time and often needed quick access to information.
Prioritization was a guessing game.
People didn't understand what to complete first.
Discoverability was a bigger issue than content availability.
Features like Search, Library, and Badges were often overlooked.
AI was welcome when it reduced friction
Users wanted guidance and recommendations, not automation for its own sake.
Experience strategy
Two mindsets, one experience
The existing experience was organized around internal platforms and org structures — so no matter which mindset someone showed up with, they had to do the work of translating their need into the system's language.
This framework became the test for every design decision that followed: does this help someone complete what they need to, or explore what they want to — without making them think about which system they're in?
Mindset A
“I need to complete something.”
Mindset B
“I want to learn something.”
exploration
What should associates see first?
Before committing to a layout, I needed to settle one question the research kept surfacing: when an associate opens the platform, what should land first? I explored three directions, each making a different bet on that first glance.
Content-led — opens with a featured course to pull associates in. Compelling, but required work drops below the fold.
Dashboard-led — surfaces everything at once: progress, assigned work, badges. Complete, but the density competes for that first glance.
Search-led — leads with intent and discovery. Clean and modern, but assigned work stays secondary.
Process
AI-assisted rapid prototyping
AI-assisted sketching and prototyping accelerated exploration — visualizing alternatives and challenging assumptions early, without ever standing in for final design decisions.
Solutions
Five moves that changed the experience
Unified Learning Across Devices
Associates complete structured learning on desktop in backrooms, while mobile supports on-the-job field learning. One consistent system that adapts to context instead of forcing a single mode.
Prioritized learning
Content reorganized around urgency and progress — overdue, due soon, and in-progress items surface first, followed by personalized recommendations. Less deciding, more doing.
Clear Learning Structure
Research revealed confusion around topics, learning paths, and badges, making it difficult for associates to understand their development journey. I established a clear learning hierarchy and dedicated badge experience that connects daily learning activities to role mastery, certifications, and career growth opportunities.
Search-Driven Discovery
Many associates were unaware of learning resources beyond assigned training. By placing search at the top of the experience and supporting it with suggested topics and recommendations, I made learning easier to discover, explore, and access on demand.
AI-Assisted Experiences
We explored integrating Walmart’s internal AI assistant, Sidekick, to help associates find training, understand onboarding requirements, track progress, and discover career opportunities using natural language. This reduced navigation effort and provided more personalized learning guidance.
Looking ahead
A Skills Ecosystem
By combining work experience, learning history, and AI-inferred skills, the platform can power personalized recommendations, career development, internal mobility, and talent growth — extending far beyond checking boxes toward continuous skill development.
Reflection
From completion to a skills engine
Enterprise learning isn't just a UX problem. It's behavioral, operational, and organizational — and the most valuable learning experiences don't just track completion. They build skills, confidence, and pathways toward growth.
Other Works
