DIY : Home Depot DIY Mobile UX – Jason Elliott – Medium
Design Process
A collaborative, user-centered, iterative design process was used to guide this project from kickoff through discovery to the visual design solution. The facilitation of team understanding and decision making were critical in completing this task within the limited time allowed. Time-boxing our steps from research and wire-framing to testing and design iterations also played a crucial role in keeping us in focus to deliver an accurate and simple solution. We also conducted user research and usability testing in order to meet not only user needs but core business needs.
User Research
To start our discovery phase we conducted a round of screen surveys to filter through users to find our target users, leading us into several iterations of user interviews where we discovered several insights telling us why people take on DIY projects at home.
Affinity Mapping
To further refine our finding are used a familiar method called Affinity Mapping to find common patterns or trends with the users with the interview. This helps us get a more accurate scope on what users truly need in regards to the Home Depot Mobile DIY experience. Our finding narrowed down to 3 main user traits.
- People desire to save money.
- They believe DIY is much faster than contacting a contractor/repair professional.
- They all share the determination and confidence in their own ability to fix the issue.
Tips and Takeaways
Most DIY projects are taken on to fix things in their homes vs DIY projects for leisure. They also share the fact that they have some idea of how to fix things around the house but just need a little clear guidance to motivate them. This is where an intuitive how instructional experience can come into play.
Persona
Further, along into our research, we are able to create a life persona based on our affinity map insights. Here is where we shape and define our core problem.
“I’d love a super clear instructional guide that can tell me common remedies. One that gives me the complex fixes to common appliances most regular people don’t know.”
Here we can see Ronnie our main persona has the core traits of a DIY consumer listing their main needs and frustrations with DIY today. This information helps us in the next phase when we run through a series of time-boxed sketch rounds. By this point, we are fired up with ideas and solutions in our head. This is where it is most critical to keep a tight grouping as a team otherwise we will lose track of our core understanding and goals. Time is limited and we still have so much to do.
Design Studio
Coming into our Design phase we start off with feature prioritization working our way into a series of sketching rounds to get a baseline understanding on where we want to go with the layout and design of each component in the DIY feature we add to the Home Depot app.
The MOSCOW method (must have, should have, could have and won’t have) helped us put our top 3 features into priority within the short time that we have to create this section of the app.
As you can see we have overall 3 main features to the app based on the user insights and persona created. Our main efforts will be put into the design of
- An easy to use navigation within the apps current design for DIY
- An intuitive “How To” section including project saving, shopping and discovery.
- A user defined and dedicated project section giving the user the ability to create, document and track their DIY Projects.
Usability Testing
From what we discovered after several rounds of usability testing with the mid to hi-fidelity wire-frames, we can confirm that users are not fans of a cluttered and confusing navigation. It’s also very frustrating and upsetting when users cant gets to a fix fast enough. They are already stressed about the issue at hand. Another insight is they enjoy the use of clear and large visuals especially in the “Idea” section which is more for inspired DIY enthusiasts seeking the next challenge. Users were also very pleased with the ability to get to common fixes quickly and easy to read How to instructions supported with rich media.
