Walmart's Spark Driver
Platform
Helping Spark Drivers taking the first trip confidently | Project Duration : June 2023 - Aug 2023
Area
Product Strategy and Design development
Methods
UX research, UX design, Product roadmap & strategy
Client
Walmart
Team
Led the project in collaboration with UX design, Marketing and Engineering teams at Walmart
My Role
Led the project in collaboration with UX design, marketing and engineering teams at Walmart
Project Overview
The Spark Driver platform powers delivery services for Walmart stores, Sam’s club and wide range of other retailers associated with Walmart under the Walmart Go-local program. Drivers submit their applications for gig driving opportunities with Spark Driver on driver4spark.com. Once application is submitted these drivers wait for the application approval.
Why?
Walmart was experiencing high churn rate and lower activation rate of new drivers. It means new drivers were not taking the first trip even after getting approved to drive. The new drivers were not being abled to prepare and be confident to take the trip with Walmart due to inaccessibility to getting started resources.
What?
The new Spark Driver portal with getting started resources help these drivers gain knowledge about Spark Driving process while they wait for their approval.
How?
The new Spark Driver portal with getting started resources help these drivers gain knowledge about Spark Driving process while they wait for their approval.
Impact: With the help of new Spark Driver portal customer contact calls would reduce by 3% and number of drivers who would take trips after approval would increase by 4.3%*
The Challenge
User Goal
How might we prepare new drivers for their first Spark delivery while they wait for approval?
Business Goals
How might we increase the activation rate* of new drivers and reduce the churn rate?
- activation rate – The percentage of drivers taking first trip after approval
How did I get there?
Research Insights – UX research team interviewed 9 new drivers and analyzed 650 posts on social media to understand drivers sentiments and understand new drivers onboarding experience. The research provided me with valuable insights into new drivers pain-points.
Key Insights
New Drivers are…
not completing the first strip because they do not feel comfortable with the Spark delivery process
- expecting immediate access to step-by-step resource content explaining what to do and how Spark works
- frustrated by unclear understanding of expectations / requirements to do Spark Driver offers and they therefore contact customer support
New Driver's Journey
Existing driver portal
When a player visits a real-world location and walks a minimum number of steps, they can unlock the landmark or building within the game. This creates a sense of accomplishment and encourages players to continue exploring new places in the real world.
Existing driver portal
Un-clear application status
Drivers found the copy unclear
Lack of information on Spark Driving process
Existing driver portal
Content Strategy
I crafted content strategy for the product. I conducted competitive analysis to analyze platfrom such as Lyft, Uber, Instacart to understand the features and interviewed with existing drivers understand their requirements. The user research insights and competitive analysis informed the content for new portal. The new content was introduced in 4 categories –
Application Information
New application status bar
Video
Spark Delivery offers
How earnings work
How Shop & delivery works?
How to prepare for first trip?
Articles
Getting started
Earnings
Account Management
Troubleshooting
Spark Delivery
Steps for completing the delivery from downloading the app to delivering the first offer
Design Considerations
- The new portal design is created with the future vision to create a one stop platform for the drivers for all their needs. Currently, drivers feel overwhelmed with the plethora of information provided in the Spark Driver app.
The aim of the project was to create a minimum viable product for user testing. Therefore, the team decided to create a home page and a help page with getting started resources
- The new driver portal design is aligned with Spark driver app to provide consistent experience to drivers throughout their journey from discovering Spark up to taking first delivery.
- All the essential information has to be provided on home page with scope of future integration for instance, five videos are introduced with the link to open the new page which contains additional videos.
- The accessibility WCAG principles are followed in design.
New Driver Portal
New Driver Portal
New copy for status cards
Videos on Spark Platform
Application status Bar to clearly indicate application status
Link to FAQs page on Spark website
Steps of delivery from turning on Spark app to completing the first offer
New resources related to background check and preparing for the first delivery offer
Management Feedback
Overall, the senior executives provided positive feedback on the vision and execution of designs with some minor changes. The feedback was provided on content and design of the portal. It was advised that getting started resources must be re-consider to match with upcoming content experience in the Spark Driver app. Secondly, It was suggested to propose new designs for applicant status card or future versions. The application status cards for MVP were designed to match the other status cards which were already in-production therefore, it was difficult to propose new designs at the MVP stage.
Key Takeaways
Always be open to feedback, be agile and keep the user’ experience paramount. It is the only way to converge the diverging viewpoints of different disciplines.
- One of key experience for me was to aligning teams together, negotiating and proposing solutions within tech, design and legal constraints
With the time and resource constraints, it was not viable to create a new copy for the portal. Given these limitations, I leveraged the copy existed in other platforms of Spark driver.
- The users learn to use the Spark Driver products in a certain way and therefore, it was imperative that new designs align with the design language of other Spark Portals