BACKGROUND

One of the three Usability Studies that I conducted was In-Store App Study. The comparative study among top retailers such as Target, Walmart, Best Buy, The Home Depot, Lowe's, Kohl's etc. was conducted to evaluate the four features of the in-store mode:

a. Welcome Message               b. In-store Map               c. Shopping List               d. Barcode Scanner.

After evaluation of 9 different retailers and store visits we decided to conduct the in-store study at The Home Depot, Target and Walmart. We conducted in-store study with 10 different users spread across the three retailers.

All the users for the Home Depot app, agreed to the usefulness of the retail apps but were reluctant to keep the app on their phone due to their infrequent visit to the Home Depot every year. This led to the Initial Problem Statement for my individual User Research & UX/UI project. 

One of the core values at the Home Depot is to help the community. So I wanted to include that sense of community in my solution besides empathy for the users. Further, the biggest asset of The Home Depot is the over 2000 physical stores, so I wanted to get inspired from the physical experience a user has in their store.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

The Micro-moments study by Google, defines that internet browsing can be broken down as one of the four micro-moments listed below. At The Home Depot.com 'I-want-to-Buy' is the primary micro-moment  but there is also an increase in search on 'I-want-to-Do' around the products. 

More research revealed that websites with more 'How-To' content tends to get more traffic. Although THD has started making 'how-to' videos, the mere volume of product offerings makes it impossible to make all the videos in-house. One of the possible directions to tackle this issue is User Generated Content. This would cover the community aspect of the design objective.

During the research phase I talked to 10 professionals from across The Home Depot working in different departments such as Environmental Design, Visual Merchandising,  UX for Customer Service, Digital Strategy, Home Services etc. I realized that apps/mobile website etc. are mere trends. They are medium to provide solution to the users. What is constant is the Experience that The Home Depot is thriving to provide to their customers on a daily basis. The Primary and Secondary Research led to redefining the Problem Statement.

PERSONA - PRIMARY USER

Meet Thea O'Connel, our primary user for the solution. The persona was based off a customer, I interacted with in the store during my in-store day as part of the internship.

MIND MAP, TASK JOURNEY MAP & EMOTIONAL JOURNEY MAP

After collecting the information from Primary and Secondary Research I started with a Mind-Map to understand the bigger picture of the problem. I realized that The Home Depot primarily supports Projects (renovation of kitchen, building new porch etc.) and Problems(Fixing a leaky faucet or broken toilet etc.). For the internship project, I decided to consider 'Problems' as the use-case scenario. 

A typical user journey for our persona, Thea O'Connel, is understanding the problem, trying to discover solutions online on various forums and then choosing to buy required components either online or in a physical store.

While The Home Depot is an authority in the knowledge on fixing house related problems within the store, their presence online in solving such problems is close to non-existent. Further, when Thea discover the problems from one of the various sources in the Discovery phase, she is free to choose any retailer to fulfill their problem. 

If we consider the emotional journey that Thea goes through, we can clearly map out how easy it is for her to get confused by the overwhelming and non-streamlined solutions present at various location online. This confusion stays as such when Thea is trying to buy the components to fix the problem from various sources.

What if The Home Depot provides solutions for Thea's problem at the Discovery Phase and then leads her into their online retail space by seamlessly connecting the solution to the required components?

Inspiration

Before we look at the solution, let's look at the two primary inspirations that led to the inception of the design concept. 

STORY BOARD

The following storyboard are the steps defining various steps Thea has to go through in order to ask a question to the online community, and what to expect in the solution. The story board was also used to understand the potential Site-Map/Information Flow for this tool.

Screen Mockups & Wireframes

After wireframing and quick ideation some of the UI for various screens is displayed below. The UI is done for Thea, the Primary user while submitting a question or receiving a solution.