How we redesigned B&M's native mobile experience to make product discovery, store finding, and everyday shopping simpler across 900+ UK stores.

B&M serves millions of customers through a fast-moving retail network of more than 900 stores. The mobile app needed to make a large and constantly changing product range easier to explore while helping customers find the right store with less effort. This case study focuses on how I framed that complexity, made key product decisions, and worked with engineering to ship a clearer native experience on iOS and Android.

At a glance

Role

Lead Product Designer

Scope

Product Strategy · UX/UI · Design System · Prototyping · Developer Handoff

Platforms

iOS · Android

Impact

2M+ users · 900+ stores · Shipped product

Context

B&M’s scale creates a specific product challenge. Customers are not browsing a small, predictable catalogue; they are navigating a broad retail experience in which product availability, relevance, and proximity all shape the journey. The app had to support quick discovery without pretending that every store or every customer had the same needs.

The challenge

Customers needed a faster way to discover products and find relevant stores across a retail network of 900+ locations. Search, category browsing, and store discovery existed as related but disconnected tasks, which increased friction and made the experience feel more complex than the customer’s underlying goal.

The design problem was therefore not simply to refresh the interface. It was to decide what information should appear first, how different discovery modes should work together, and when the app should ask for contextual permissions without interrupting the journey.

My role and ownership

I led the product design work from problem framing through interaction design, visual direction, prototyping, and developer handoff. My responsibility was to turn broad business and customer needs into a coherent mobile experience, align the team around the most important decisions, and stay close to implementation so that the shipped product retained the intent behind the design.

Constraints that shaped the work

The solution had to work across a large store network, support both iOS and Android conventions, remain understandable for frequent and occasional shoppers, and fit the realities of an established retail business. It also had to scale beyond a single launch: patterns for navigation, discovery, permissions, and store information needed to be reusable rather than designed as isolated screens.

Understanding the experience

I mapped the main discovery journeys and the points where customers had to switch mental models: searching for a known product, browsing without a precise goal, and finding a nearby store. Looking at these journeys together exposed duplicated steps and helped us move away from organising the app around internal features. The new direction organised the experience around customer intent.

Key design decisions

1. Bringing search and category discovery together

Search and categories are often treated as separate features, but customers move between them fluidly. Someone may begin with a broad category, refine their intent, and then search for a specific product. I brought these behaviours into a shared discovery model so customers could move from exploration to intent without repeatedly returning to the top level. The goal was not to reduce the number of options; it was to reduce the cost of changing direction.

2. Asking for location in context

A system permission prompt shown too early asks users to make a trust decision before they understand the benefit. Instead of opening the native location dialog immediately, I introduced a contextual card that explained why location would improve the experience: it could surface nearby stores and make store discovery more relevant. The system prompt appeared only after the customer chose to continue. This made the request feel connected to a clear outcome rather than an arbitrary technical requirement.

3. Designing store discovery around intent

A store list alone does not answer the customer’s real questions: Which store is closest? Is it open? How do I get there? I prioritised proximity and decision-critical information, then kept secondary details available without overwhelming the first view. This hierarchy helped customers compare locations quickly while preserving the depth needed for planning a visit.