Transforming Best Buy's Retail Experience: A Personalization Journey
During a period of organizational change and shifting enterprise priorities, I took on the challenge of building the personalization team from the ground up. It was not just redesigning the app home screen, but leading a newly formed team to deliver impactful outcomes.
The end result was an AI-powered personalized app home experience , creating a tailored journey for each customer.
The Challenge: Reimagining the App Home Screen
As a retail company, Best Buy excels at measuring transactional data. The differentiator that would set the business up for success is to become more than just a store to shop. In February 2023, the personalization team was formed as the enterprise strategy focuses on relationship-building.
Previous State
Static content, marketing banners, and sponsored ads dominated the app home screen.
User Pain Points
Discoverability, findability, and usefulness were major issues for users.
The Goal
Create a personalized app home experience that guide customers through every phase of their shopping journey.
Building the Team, Co-creating the Experience
As a leader, I focused on two key elements: team dynamics and execution excellence. I guided the team through their initial forming stages, carefully nurturing their development while maintaining clear expectations. By establishing transparent communication channels and providing targeted support, I created an environment where the team could innovate confidently.
Strategic Partners
The leads, directors, and VPs within the enterprise customer insight, product, and engineer teams.
Tactical Partners
Partnership across pricing, deals, membership, app growth, recommendations, marketing, ads, branding, and design system.
Core Team
I led a team of 4 experience designers, a content designer, and a researcher, partnering with 5 product managers and 12 engineers to deliver the framework that is the building block of the personalized app home experience.
Roles and Responsibilities
The personalization team was assembled on the cusp of reorg and enterprise priority shift. Everyone, including myself, was new to this space. And because personalization is an enterprise-level priority, we were not the only team working to deliver a cross-channel personalization experience. Beyond the leadership within the core team, I have tactical partners within the home screen, pricing, deals, membership, app growth, recommendations, marketing, adTech, branding, and design system. My strategic partners were leads, directors, and VPs within enterprise customer insight, product, and research teams.
As the Sr. Manager of experience design within the personalization team, my responsibilities fell into two groups - management and strategic work.
Management Work
Change Management
Led the team through forming to performing stages, assessing skills and adapting to new challenges.
Team Performance
Ensured delivery against expectations through clear communication and appropriate support.
Talent Development
Built a high-performing team capable of system design, user validations, and tactical assignments.
Strategic Work
Partnership Building
Socialized and built partnerships with a broad range of teams across the organization.
Alignment Creation
Developed "personalized user stories" to frame the personalization experience and bridge understanding.
Process Optimization
Assessed and optimized ways of working across practices to resolve conflicts and improve efficiency.
From Vision to Reality: The Development Process
The UX vision was a collaborative effort across multiple teams and leaders, shaped through workshops, strategic alignment, and continuous storytelling.
Vision Workshop
To define the vision, I led multi-day vision workshops, co-created proof of concept designs with leadership, and ensured alignment with enterprise strategy, balancing near-term execution with long-term goals.
Enterprise Alignment
To socialize the vision, we crafted user stories—bringing personalization to life through Nancy and Steve’s journeys. These scenarios became powerful storytelling tools, helping align the e-team, field leaders, and board members.
Ways of Working
We also leveraged cross-team insights, aligning with stakeholders through weekly design reviews and program updates, while pushing design and content standards to modernize the system.
To execute the vision, I worked closely with teams responsible for app personalization, home screen, and navigation, defining roles to ensure clarity, speed, and seamless collaboration.
This structured approach turned our UX vision into an actionable strategy, driving impact across the organization.
Storytelling Through Customers' Lenses
I anchored ideation in user stories, using two key scenarios to shape our personalized experience vision. This approach helped stakeholders see through the customer’s perspective, driving alignment across teams. As we refined these stories—integrating customer segments, enterprise strategy, and business goals—they became a powerful storytelling tool, influencing the e-team, field leaders, and board meetings.
By crafting personalization user stories, we fostered enterprise-wide alignment and shaped the future of customer experience
Leadership Across Multiple Teams
For phase one, the scope was a personalized experience for the app home screen, header, and bottom navigation. This requires working closely with the team responsible for the home screen and global navigation. I worked with the XD director to define roles and expectations to reduce confusion and tension while moving fast and collaborating.
Working with deals, membership, trade-in, and recommendation teams to create personalized content which we referred to as stories.
Working with the design operation and branding teams to develop UI patterns and expand color palettes.
Impact and Recognition
14
Months to Launch
The success was validated through extensive A/B testing, marking a significant milestone in Best Buy's digital transformation journey.
15%
Positive customer sentiment
15% increase in positive customer sentiment towards GHP content effectiveness.
2024
Award Year
Recognized with the Forrester Technology Strategy Impact Award for the initiative's success.
$130M
Incremental Revenue
What started as an customer engagement initiative evolved into a significant revenue driver.