The Problem
Selling workflows had become increasingly fragmented across departments
Associates required extensive training just to operate within their area
Fragmented systems made it difficult for Home Depot to evolve and innovate
My role was to go into stores, spend time with associates, understand what was really happening on the ground, and help figure out a path forward.
Research & Insights
We started by going into stores and spending time with associates across departments, observing how they worked and where things were breaking down.
Through interviews and observations, we built a clearer understanding of how selling operated across the store.
We found that
Each department relied on its own ecosystem of disconnected systems
Associates had to jump between multiple applications to help customers
Different systems often returned conflicting information or failed to share data
Associates relied on workarounds and tribal knowledge to handle unsupported scenarios
Customer needs extended beyond department boundaries
A Shared Foundation
Through that research, a clear vision started to emerge: one platform where any associate could help any customer, in any department, from anywhere in the store.
Before we could design the experience, we needed to solve a data problem. Data discrepancies across systems had created conflicting information with no single source of truth.
We partnered closely with the teams responsible for those core business domains to establish a shared foundation that everything could run on. That work made it possible to deliver a more consistent and reliable experience across departments.
A Simpler Model
When we stripped away the complexity of the existing systems, most selling scenarios followed the same underlying pattern:
Searching for a product or service
Evaluating or configuring it
Managing the quote or order
We used this to define three core parts of the experience:
Product Search, Product Details, and the Shopping Cart.
