As a UX Design Intern, I worked on creating Home Depot's transfers feature. If you think about Home Depot as a company, they have a lot of tools and equipment they have to move between stores, warehouses, rental facilities, etc. A transfer is essentially just when a Home Depot associate moves a pieces of equipment from one Home Depot location to another.
In order to do this, I did some preliminary primary research on what the current transfers process is, what painpoints are associated with it (spoiler: there's a lot!), and hashed out the high fidelity design for the feature flow.
Outside of my design work, I was able to present my research to Home Depot Rental leadership as well as the Technology division's leadership.
Home Depot had recently switched to Figma at this time, and as a Figma mega-user I also helped designers troubleshoot Figma issues.
Lastly, I planned chats and events with the other UX Design interns on my team. This last thing is something that I hold near and dear to me as someone who thrives off of building robust support systems when I'm in an unfamiliar environment.
During my second semester with the Home Depot Inventory Management team, I acted as the sole designer and researcher on the team. I spent this time aligning with product on higher level strategic initiatives for the team, and then conducted exploratory user research around Home Depot holding sites and home locations.
Thank-you to Lisa Murtaugh for your mentorship while I was navigating this new team dynamic! :-)
Watch the video I made below if you'd like to know more about the work I did this semester!
Note: I've edited my original video to remove some sensitive workplace information.
This semester I interned on the In-Store Tasking team. Essentially this team is in charge of all the applications that associates use within the Home Depot stores. Within In-Store Tasking, I worked within Asset Protection. I spent the semester making the first mobile application of Home Depot's IP Camera Tool, which is used to install and troubleshoot all security cameras at store locations.
Watch the video I made below if you'd like to know more about the work I did for IP Camera Tool (and also some of the things I learned!)
Note: I've edited my original video to remove some sensitive workplace information.
This was my 2nd semester interning on the In-Store Tasking team and my 5th semester interning at The Home Depot Enterprise UX team! I spent the semester continuing on IP Camera Tool work, specifically an area of IP Camera Tool that had remained untouched by the previous redesign - reporting. Reporting encompasses the ability to see cameras and the history of all cameras agnostic of the specific store they are in. Many associates who work in asset protection at Home Depot have a need for looking at overall camera activity and troubleshooting cameras across stores by status.
Watch the video I made below if you'd like to know more about the work I did for IP Camera Tool Reporting!
1. Enterprise solutions require connected and scalable design solutions.
As I designed, I learned the importance of future-proofing and scaling my designs. The nature of enterprise means that applications are often heavily interconnected with one another, it means through design, you must take into account how these connections happen and how you can continue and improve them in future iterations, and even leave room for future features.
2. Working in a design system means learning how to not break it.
Home Depot's Enterprise UX team is a huge team of over 200 designers, this means that our Design Systems team can't micromanage every single design and whether or not we are breaking design system guidelines. I learned to frontload this effort and try and figure out how to design within the system guidelines earlier on so that I could comfortably work in higher fidelity later and save myself time.
3. Participatory design doesn't mean getting everything from users
The UX culture at Home Depot is big on participatory design. Designers are constantly organizing great workshops with stakeholders and involving users in every step of the process. One thing I learned as I worked was how to involve my team and my users in each step of the process without overwhelming them. I began to learn how to strategically choose when to involve them more, and when I could use my own expertise to make educated decisions as the designer to save them some time.
