Welcome to Home Depot
Home Depot has been around since 1978.
As a child of the 80's and as an only child to an Architect/DIY'er, Home Depot was a Home Staple.
Growing up, I learned how to use a power drill at age 10, at 15 I helped my Father build retaining rock walls in our backyard and very early on I learned the importance of a level.
These are just a few examples. Needless, to say, working on this brand was very close to my heart.
Project Brief
Two week sprint
Team:
Mike, Barb, Dan
and Myself
• Evaluate Home Depot’s current website & provide research document
• Redesign Home Depot’s current Web/desktop site based on
research/findings
• Team recommendation and future steps
My Role:
Various aspects in
User Research,
Spec Documents,
Iteration for submittal
Target Device:
Existing desktop devices
Process Overview: Double Diamond
Discovery
This project was a quality control check - to see what issues User's may be having - to an existing website.
We spent quite a lot of time on research and employed a number tools to conduct our research:
1) Contextual Inquiries
2) Screener Survey’s
3) Usability Tests (on current website)​
4) Analysis of competitors and comparators​
5) Card sorting​
6) Heuristics analysis
Out of 23 respondents for our Screener Survey,
we pulled 7 users for our usability tests.
• These users had both shopped at
Home Improvement stores in person,
and had experience using the website
• They all considered themselves DIY'ers
Usability Tests were designed around:
• 4 of our pulled Users looked for building
materials & installation services.
• They also were curious if it was worth their
time, money and effort to do it yourself
Usability Tests led us to pull the following areas of improvement:
Users could
not find
DIY videos
or tutorials
Users could
not find
the "Chat" button on all pages
Installation Services was not easily found
Multiple points of entry made it confusing for Users to remember how to find a product again
Mobile was a lot easier to navigate than desktop
To view our detailed report
please click on the PDF
Heuristics confirmed data from our usability tests.
That we needed to focus on areas of: Findability, Clarity & Learnability
Define l Research Synthesis
With these insights in mind, we created a User Persona to identify our target audience and solve for their needs. In addition, we created a Journey Map and Problem Statement.
Design
With 3 days left to go, we needed to pare down our design to the basics of what
was needed for findability, clarity & learnability
​
Design Studio
This was quick, we just wanted to incorporate what we learned in Research & Synthesis
MoSCoW Method
We used the MoSCoW
method to prioritize our features and most importantly eliminate anything for time constraints
MUST
-
Add an “installation” button next to product purchase phase could be an option for clarity
-
Combine Chat/Feedback feature w/phone#
-
Add a Tutorials/Video section
to DIY section of nav bar
Should
Try to compare mobile app with the desktop - try to mirror why the mobile app is easier
Could
Eliminate other points of pathways that could confuse Users
WON'T
We will NOT be adding the same features to every product page - ONLY concentrate on usability findings related to Tiles
The adjustments made to the pages would serve to illustratrate "How to apply" to other product pages
Initial Wireframes
Team Recommendation
Home Depot's website is constantly evolving as their vast number of product categories/portfolio are consistently updated. For User Experience to be seamless, we have recommended the following changes.
We hope that after more User Testing, that the change to the Tile category be applied across all other products/categories that may require installation. More importantly, the other changes we recommend may
be applied universally as they appear on HD's top navigation. Our goal is to have the User to have a more delightful experience when shopping and find their needs.
Next Steps
1. Test to see if adjustments made (to top navigation bar and Tile selection checkout)
allows for Users more ease in findability, clarity and learnability
2. Apply "next steps" in the process of viewing tutorials/videos, checking out Installation Services.
This may include updating overlays and or sub menus.
2. While we recommend changes to Home Depot's current desktop interface, it would be a
very good idea to research why the mobile app is easier - then implement/mirror changes.
3. Learn new insights from Users when exploring HD's other products/sections to help
further the User's experience