As part of Sam's Club's digital transformation initiatives, the Backroom Design team is updating the Claims app during React Native migration. To streamline React Native implementation, the project optimized existing Claims app by creating a unified Figma design library leveraging Sam's Club Design System, Blue Steel DLS 2.0. The goal aimed to bridge engineering-design collaboration communication and ultimately enhance associate productivity to process retail returns and claims items handling more efficiently across 600+ Sam's Clubs.
The legacy Claims app has outdated interfaces and siloed claims handling experience with a heavy reliance on manual and paper-based sorting process. Complicated workflows, spread design assets, disorganized file resources, and duplicative development efforts created communication barriers and limited engineers and designers to collaborate for React Native implementation.
As the lead designer for the Claims app, I led the modernization project initiatives of current Claims app to streamline React Native migration through collaboration with the cross-functional teams, including product managers, software engineers, operations, data analytics. My responsibilities include performing screen audit, optimization strategy, and modernized UI/UX designs.
Evaluating current app design, I was able to identify usability issues while mapping out design improvement opportunities, which helped our team prioritize migration features with design scope alignments to ensure new designs address pinpointed app issues.
To bridge cross-team collaboration, I implemented design token variables with a structured naming convention that function as a shared visual language to bridge communication between design decisions and engineering teams. This systematic approach allowed us to minimize ambiguity, create consistency, and streamline development processes for iOS and Android platform implementation.
By developing tailored components through nesting common components architecture, I minimized potential technical debt and maximized design scalability of our implemented design system. This nesting structure also provided customization flexibility through reusable existing common components, making future updates more easier and ensuring a cohesive design language across whole modernization phase.
To ensure a smooth Claims app migration to React Native, I created a modern library with unified components by fully integrating Blue Steel DLS 2.0 in Figma. This approach helped optimize cross-platform development while ensuring consistent design language across iOS and Android platforms.
The Claims App was modernized to improve efficiency and usability for backroom associates by simplifying workflows, adding clear visual guidance, and ensuring a cohesive cross-platform experience across both iOS and Android.
The project successfully achieved a 50% reduction in development effort and significantly improved claims processing efficiency for associates. Key lessons learned include the importance of involving end-users early in the design process and the value of maintaining flexible scope to adapt to constraints. Future projects would benefit from even more extensive user testing and iterative design cycles to refine usability further.
