Walmart Checks — User Account Toolkit
Designed and prototyped a user account system for WalmartChecks.com — enabling saved check designs, saved addresses, and email campaign capabilities using the site's existing component library.
Why this page is a summary: this work is covered by an NDA, so the artifacts — screens, research captures, and prototypes — are not public. What follows is the problem, how I worked it, and the decisions I made, which is the part that transfers anyway. The full case study is available on request, or behind the password below if you already have it.
The Problem
WalmartChecks.com had no user accounts. Adding them would let customers save check designs and addresses and let marketing build email campaigns from that data — but it had to land inside a site that already existed, already worked, and that people already knew how to use. The constraint was as much about what not to disturb as what to add.
What I Did
The work behind the wall.
Researched and scoped what the account actually needed to hold — saved designs, saved addresses, campaign data capture
Analyzed how people already moved through the site and let that shape the account layout
Designed a single-page account interface built from the site's existing styles and component patterns
Built a high-fidelity toolkit on atomic design principles, from atoms through to full page templates
Delivered a functional prototype for developer handoff, verified across the top five browsers plus Android and iOS
Decisions
The calls I made, and why.
The screens are confidential. The reasoning is not, and it is the part worth reading.
Borrow the mental model people already had
Customers were already fluent in the site's category page structure — that was the shape they expected content to come in. Rather than introduce a new organizing idea for the account area, I built the account layout on the structure they had already learned, so the new feature cost them nothing to understand.
Constrain to the existing component library on purpose
Designing net-new components would have produced a better-looking account area and a worse outcome. The existing components were already tested, already built, and already familiar. Working inside that constraint meant the design could actually ship, and it kept the account from feeling like a bolted-on section of someone else's website.
Hand off a system, not a picture
Atomic design was the handoff strategy. Breaking the interface down to its smallest reusable units and composing upward gave developers an implementation-ready specification with the reasoning visible, rather than a set of screens they would have to reverse-engineer into components.
What's in the full case study
The atomic design toolkit itself — atoms through pages — the functional prototype, and the cross-browser and device test results.