Vintage 2015 / 2016

Igniting Home Depot's digital transformation

UX-driven innovation and prototyping excellence with Personalization for Account Holders, Order Tracking and My Lists (2015/2016)

Highlight: My-Account Customers cart to order conversion reach 60%! SIXTY compared with overall cart to order conversion of 38% (2015/2016)

INTRO - HERITAGE 

Honoring Founders: Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank

At it's start, The Home Depot was co-founded by Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Ron Brill, and Pat Farrah in 1978. What began as a superstore for Home Improvement enthusiasts quickly became America's go-to retailer for most house, gardening, construction and seasonal needs. The edge noticed in Home Depot had to be Leaderships particular detail to maintaining that "know your customers" principles which Arthur and company lived by. I never not once felt bad or remotely out of pocket for questioning if a particular feature seemed far removed from the Customer Journey or if people "actually do this in the wild" (offline). I found their historical view refreshing. Home Depot puts customers first, and it shows.

After showing my appreciation to these individuals as well as to Carol Hedeen and many other fearless Home Depot leaders, it's time to explore the case study.

CUSTOMER PAIN POINTS
As a customer, I would like a better account experience.

1. As a customer, I would like a better account experience.

2. As a customer that placed an order, I would like to track my order easier. IF there are multiple orders, THEN I would need a way to track multiple orders.

3. As a prospective customer, I would like to know the benefits of opening a Home Depot account.

Through agile collaboration with multiple cross-functional workstreams, while at Home Depot I helped my UX Team nail critical milestones, amping up customer engagement and turbocharging self-service that lead to double digit revenue growth in buy-again orders as well as key growth in AOV from Account Personalization. I also had the distinct honor of working alongside a top-notch UX Architect, she was very much my mentor in Information Architecture.

Solutions

Accessibility

Of paramount importance was Accessibility. Designing for screen-readers, tabulation experiences and greyscale interaction helped the Account Team cater to Home Depot Customers -- holistically. Making sure the experience is the same and equal for ALL shoppers is an ongoing goal for the team over there at Home Depot -- honored to have taken part in sit-down sessions with fellow User Experience practitioners who evangelize the necessity of good, strong, accessibility points.

Power up mobile flow
Once Registered, the dashboard experience would take shape. A conceptual idea beginning with mobile interfacing. 

Part II - Screens + Design

Below are a mix of Concepts and Approved Designs. The Home Depot Team is kind enough to allow me to show work performed with the good folks over at their Digital Experience headquarters over in Atlanta. Going to miss UX afternoons and Product Lunches as well as deep discussions on the future of Zero UI with one of the most brilliant directors I have had the pleasure of meeting. Below are screens of motion and design..

Motion…

Taking a cue from Google Material movement, I began to concept the idea of their "consistent choreography" within animation of User Interface elements. On a TAP or CLICK their should be a harmony of smooth transition and solid hierarchy without looking haphazard..or a flash project from 1998.

Static Example of Account Dashboard - Mobile Experience

In practice with Choreographed animation via Google Material Design philosophy

Motion Philosophy applied to Large Site and Tablet

MultiChannel and Breadth of Work

Deviating from design-philosphy a bit (while also staying true to my agreement with my friends over at Home Depot) below are concepts during my time with HD. The nobler motives and objective of stakeholders within my team always championed around User-Satisfaction and Customer Success. Truly enjoyed my time at Home Depot and count many of those folks as friends. A few concepts below...

Mobile Order Tracking Chat component: In Motion

MAML Home Depot 2015 UX List flow

Create List

New list Created

Home Depot is still Revolutionizing

While Home Depot won Retailer of the Year in 15; to this day, I still rely on some of the alum when I need Digital Sales advice as well as Customer Engagement direction. The Education received from working with some of the brightest in the Ecommerce space has led to not only millions of dollars for Home Depot, but a better, smarter, digital future for my family through enhanced skills and breadth of jobs retained.

I also worked on a very immersive Enterprise project which is NDA restricted. However, working with eye-tracking and within a Usability Lab was breath-taking.

If you currently are looking to grow Sales and Marketing; then consider adding a feature your Users cannot go without. Innovation is eventual, not overnight.

Write Ups:
Self-Service UX: Integrate All Order Tracking Info and Events Within the E-Commerce Site Itself (E-Commerce: Order Tracking Optimization)

-Baymard Institute

https://baymard.com/blog/integrate-tracking-info 

Pattern in Sketch (what we used back in 2015/2016:

Order Cancellation Request: Have a ‘Cancellation Requested’ Order State

-Baymard Institute

https://baymard.com/blog/cancellation-requested-order-state 

2015 / 2016 Exploration concepts from
Order Tracking Card with Buy Again feature

An honor and never will forget working with the brilliant Team at Home Depot as well as being mentored by one of the best User Experience Practitioners on earth. She is awesome.