PLANOGRAM
Wayfair 2024 - 2025
OVERVIEW
Wayfair assigned and managed item location for its first few brick & mortar stores using a highly manual, error prone, and arduous process powered by disconnected tools. Every store flip yielded over 850+ placement errors, 500 hours spent reconciling issues, and 40%+ of items without a designated location. It became clear this process would not scale with us.
Wayfair underwent a lengthy vendor evaluation for planogramming software. The business determined that the level of effort it would take to modify existing software for our unique consignment model was roughly the same as building our own. We decided to design and build our own planogramming software.
METHODS
Workshop Facilitation
User Interviews
Stakeholder Mapping
Process Flows
Jobs to Be Done
Concept Mapping
Wireframes
Usability Testing
RESEARCH + DISCOVERY
To kick off this project I led an Assumption Busting and Goal/ Anti-Goal workshop with stakeholders. During these workshops we aligned on long term goals and safe assumptions for future processes.
After the kickoff, I led user interviews with Merchants, Visual Merchandisers, Merch Ops, and the Visual Communications team to understand their roles in the assorting and planning process. This culminated in Journey Maps and Jobs to Be Done. We then aligned on the core problems with our process and tools in a collaborative Problem Definition workshop. Throughout this process I met with leaders across Wayfair Experience Design team to understand how Planogram may overlap/ fit into existing platforms in the longer term.
KEY FINDINGS
There were multiple sources of truth for what was in the assortment - which created the need for time consuming manual reconciliation.
Assortment data was disconnected from visual assets at every step of the process. Visual Merchandisers created initial looks in Google Slides by screenshotting items from the assortment. ​
Products moved in and out of the assortment at a high velocity due to our consignment model. Because our tools were disconnected, Visual Merchandisers had no visibility into what was in the assortment.
DESIGN PROCESS + ASSETS
Journey Maps
Concept Map
Platform Connection Diagrams
Sketches/ Wireframes
NORTH STAR CONCEPT
I created and aligned the team around a North Star vision that: 1) integrated our processes into existing Wayfair platforms; 2) connected Visual Merchandiser's process to actual assortment data; 3) enabled Visual Merchandisers to manage store maps, fixtures, and styling items in one location; and 4) would create a data architecture that would allow us to easily scale our business.
MVP DESIGNS
I aligned the team around an MVP that focused solely on allowing Visual Merchandisers to to assign product to fixture locations and understand what was in the assortment. The MVP would make use of our exiting internal platform Retail Home and our current tooling integrations until we collaborated with external partners to move onto better suited platforms.
RESULTS
This project is still being built. For preliminary results, I led a Usability Study for the MVP designs with all of the Visual Merchandisers. The usability study consisted of task analysis as well as a post study survey.
Users rated that they were satisfied overall with the MVP, that the tool was simple to use, and they were able to complete tasks quickly.
Users noted that they wished the initial assortment view was categorized by product class or category. Having all of the item across categories in the initial view was overwhelming.
This would really be a life changer. We deal with such a mess of tools and documents... it's a total nightmare. So, this is so great.
- IAN, VISUAL MERCHANDISER
Collections are the most important feature needed to upsell or provide additional options if the current product is not fitting their needs
- SALES ASSOCIATE