Designing a Scalable System That Bridges Strategy and Store Execution

A UX Systems Case Study

The Style Guide is a digital, internal toolkit used across Gap Inc. brands. It aligns cross functional teams around seasonal visual merchandising strategies, product information, and brand standards, enabling consistent execution across every store location.

THE STYLE GUIDE’S UNIVERSE

The Foundation

The Old Navy Style Guide is a toolkit built for visual merchandising managers and cross-functional teams giving everyone a shared foundation for consistency, clarity and alignment.

It integrates brand guidelines, product data, and design systems to deliver an exceptional in-store customer experience for every customer.

It also serves as the connective bridge between corporate and field teams, supporting the end-to-end workflows that bring the brand to life in every store.

THE BIG PICTURE PROCESS

In order to make sense of the Style Guide framework, it is critical to understand the full journey of the big picture process, the teams involved and what the journey looks like from beginning to end and we have to look at the universe the style guide lives in.

The following is insight into the constellation of where the Style Guide sits in the Big Picture process.

The Herculean Collective Effort

To understand the purpose and impact of the Style Guide, it's important to first understand the ecosystem it operates within. The Style Guides exist within a larger network of teams, processes, and systems that shape how retail experiences are designed and delivered. At the corporate level, stakeholders, executives, buyers, and merchants synthesize business objectives, product information, and visual direction into a cohesive strategy.

The Style Guide serves as a vehicle for translating that strategy to the field, providing stores with the information they need to plan, execute, and deliver consistent business and visual experiences. Understanding this relationship between corporate and field teams provides essential context for understanding the Style Guide's role within the organization.

Why the Style Guide Exists

As Old Navy transitioned from printed to fully digital Style Guides, stores began receiving large volumes of new merchandise without timely corporate direction. Without clear guidance, products sat in stockrooms instead of reaching the sales floor, creating missed sales opportunities and inconsistent customer experiences.

At the same time, the Visual Communications Design team faced growing demand to produce fast, scalable Style Guides with limited resources.

This project exists to eliminate ambiguity in merchandising decision by providing clear visual guidance that helps stores move product to the floor faster, drive consistency, and recover missed sales opportunities.

What It Includes:

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Store layouts and visual mapping
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Seasonal marketing and visual strategy
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Guidelines and step-by-step how-tos
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Product data, images and illustrations
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Key merchandising elements and presentation standards

Why This Works

Beyond ensuring consistent store rollouts and exceptional customer experiences, the Style Guide enhances the design system, strengthens communication across teams, and supports sales through consistent in-store execution aligned with Old Navy’s business goals.

My Role

I was brought onto the team for my hybrid background in UX/UI, graphic design, and first-hand experience as a field Visual Merchandising Manager. Having used Style Guides as an end user, I understood operational constraints, tradeoffs, workflows and the end-to-end product journey, informing research, UX decisions, visual design and the evolution of the Style Guide system.

I worked closely with Visual Merchandising, Product Managers, Merchants, Styling, Marketing, Photographers and store visual and operations partners across all divisions.

Role: Visual Designer

Team: Visual Communications Director, Designer I, UX Designer and Senior Visual Merchandising Manager

Partners: Corporate & Field Visual Merchandising Teams

Tools: InDesign, Illustrator, Figma, Miro, Airtable

The End-to-End Business Workflow

The Ecosystem

Style Guides exist within a complex ecosystem of teams:

Corporate Directors, Merchants, Buyers, Product, Marketing & Creative
Corporate Visual Merchandising
Corporate Design
Field Visual Merchandising
Field Logistics & Store Operations

Each team plays a distinct role, but success depends on one thing: alignment.

Two Parallel Workflows

Corporate Workflow:

Design & Visual Merchandising teams define a design system crafting the seasonal strategy, brand guidelines, product priorities, marketing and storytelling.

Field Workflow:

Field Visual Merchandising and Logistics teams execute the corporate visual strategy in stores, placing products, setting floor sets, and bringing the brand vision to life.

When these workflows are not aligned, execution suffers.

The Problems,

The Challenges,

The Insights

The problems are a symptom of a bigger issue

THE DISCOVERY

New merchandise arrives in stores in large volumes
Without clear direction from corporate, store teams don’t know where to place it
Products sit in stockrooms instead of on the sales floor
Customers don’t see the new product
The business loses sales.

THE CHALLENGE

The Human Problem

FIELD MANAGERS ARE LEFT SCRAMBLING WITHOUT VISUAL DIRECTION

Field Visual Merchandising Managers receive large volumes of new products that must be placed on the sales floor. Without a Style Guide providing actionable direction, teams are forced to improvise under time constraints, leading to inconsistent execution, delayed floor sets, and misalignment with brand standards.

Reframing the problem

When large volumes of new products arrive in stores without aligned guidance, full-price merchandise frequently remains in back rooms instead of driving daily business goals on the sales floor. Field teams are prepared to execute, but lack the direction needed to act effectively.

Corporate Pain Points

THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

The Organizational Problem

NEW ARRIVALS STALL BEFORE THEY EVER REACH THE CUSTOMER

Store Pain Points

THE RESEARCH

The Data,

The Evidence,

The Understanding

Dissecting the artifacts

THE IDEATION

The Concepts,

The Process,

The Strategy

The design process

The Customer at the Center

All teams work toward a shared goal: delivering an accessible, affordable, and easy-to-shop experience for our customers. Our approach is rooted in a human-centered mindset that aligns customer needs with business goals. By keeping the customer at the center of every decision, we create meaningful experiences that drive both customer satisfaction and business success.

DESIGN OBJECTIVES

Design a comprehensive Style Guide that translates corporate visual merchandising strategy into clear, executable guidance for field teams supporting a faster execution, consistent product placement, and a cohesive customer experience across all Old Navy stores.

THE SOLUTION

The Solution,

The Customer,

The Impact

RESEARCH

WHAT WAS WRONG

Ingridients = Research + Insights + Discovery

what was wrong

THIS IS THE EVIDENCE

this is looking at users so every design decision has a purpose

this shows how you understood the problem

persona
user interviews
analytics
competitive analysis
quotes
charts
screenshots
user research
user stories
surveys
affinity mapping
user persona
user journey map
pain point
raw data
user journey
store feedback online shopping vs brick and mortar

Insights: turn research into key insights

This is how they see how you think

insight #1

users didn’t understand why the set up mattered

The Persona

the persona body copy is a visual

Journey Map - emotional + behavioral flow

identifies friction

Floor Map - physical execution of that flow

The journey Map

IDEATION

THE DESIGN PROCESS

Recipe = Process (how i designed) + Strategy (How I approached it) + Ideation (design thinking)

This shows how you think

how insights shaped my design decisions

we explored creative directions through moodboards and early concepts so we can see the vision come to life

show iterations

sketches
wireframes
flows
prototypes
user flows
information architecture
wireframes
early concepts
design principles

people love seeing progression show the progression

sketch > wireframes > final ui

THE SOLUTION

final dish = solution (what i built)

this section explains

“based on research, here’s what I designed and why”

Reveals what I built the final product

polished mockup
flows
maps
interaction explanations
key features
screens
interaction details
maps

Explain why decisions were made

Why It Matters

Visual Merchandising is part of a larger cross-functional process that begins long before a product reaches stores. Without a system to align decisions across teams, corporate intent can be lost before it reaches the field.

The Style Guide functions as a design system for visual merchandising, translating strategy into scalable, repeatable execution.

Customer Impact

By providing clear instructions on how, what, why, when, and where to place products, the Style Guide empowers field teams to deliver cohesive floor presentations.

This ensures that Jenny can walk into any Old Navy store and easily find what she came for within a consistent, on-brand environment.

THE IMPACT

Review = results + reflection (what improved)

This is the most important section

include metrics if possible:

+32% onboarding completion

-18% support

adoption
consistency improvements
customer experience shift
efficiency metrics
what improved
what I’d do differently

THE RESULTS / REFLECTION

Great designers show learning

example:

what I learned…. creative process can be a dry journey

what i would improve

next steps are

What I would improve is include AI in their system to ask questions to speed up their own workload process instead of waiting to hear back from corporate and wait to make final decisions.