UXDI Project 3 — A DIY Tool for Home Depot

Project 3 of UXDI is where things start to get a bit more real.

First off, we were assigned a teammate. In the real world, it’s not likely a UX designer will be working solo so getting used to designing in a team is pretty important. Teamwork is one of the main reasons I chose to enroll in General Assembly versus the online bootcamps I had been considering so I was looking forward to finally working with someone. Luckily, my teammate and I worked very well together and had similar work ethics and expectations. Fingers crossed that all my future teams will mesh as smoothly.

Secondly, we were given a brief from a real world client with certain specific design requirements we needed to fulfill. Until now, we had only been designing from the users’ perspective — now we had to also factor in the requirements of the client. Our client was the Home Depot.

The Brief

Home Depot has made a lot of great improvements to its smartphone app and they want to build on that success. As the market leader in home improvement, Home Depot wants to give its customers a tool to help them brainstorm, plan, track, and even document their DIY projects.

Our task in a nutshell was to create a project planning tool for DIYers — do-it-yourselfers. Home Depot specifically wanted us to create a tool that allows users to plan their DIY projects and quickly find the materials necessary for their project.

Project Plan

The first step of our process was to create a project plan. My teammate and I discussed the various steps we’d need to take to complete this project within the 2-week timeframe and documented our plan in a shared Google document. Although we ended up deviating from our original plan as a result of the structure of the class (we hadn’t accounted for lecture time!), the project plan was helpful in keeping us on track and ensuring we knew what the other was working on.

Competitive Analysis

We began our research by thoroughly reviewing Home Depot’s existing app. My partner and I created an Excel spreadsheet detailing each of the features in Home Depot’s app. We then reviewed the apps of Home Depot’s closest competitors — Lowe’s, Sears, Menard’s and ACE Hardware — and compared the features of those apps with Home Depot’s app.

We discovered that Home Depot’s app had far more features than those of its competitors. However, there were 2 features that appeared in 2 of the 4 competitor apps that were not present in Home Depot’s app — specifically, a tool for ideas and inspiration and a tool for how-to videos.

User Survey

With a good understanding of the existing playing field, we began our user research to better understand the DIY customer. First, we used Google forms to create a survey. The purpose of the survey was to compile data on the behaviors of people who engage in do-it-yourself projects. We asked questions like, “How often do you do a DIY home improvement project?”, “How do you share your DIY home improvement projects?” and “How do you track the progress of your DIY home improvement projects?”.

Our survey received 76 responses. Some of the key takeaways from the survey results were that: (1) people do not track the progress of their DIY projects, (2) most people get help from the internet or family and friends, and (3) a small minority of DIYers share their projects via the internet.

User Interviews

Having conducted the survey and received 76 responses, we had a good understanding of the what of DIY but needed to better understand the why. To get to the root of the why, we had to talk to some users and learn more about their DIY projects. We selected 13 survey respondents and conducted a series of in-person and phone interviews over the course of 2 days. We then created an affinity map of the interview data and grouped responses into “Quotes”, “Likes”, “Dislikes” and “Behavior/Context”.

Some clear patterns emerged. In particular, we noticed the following in the behavior/context category:

• People do not track and do not want to track the progress of their DIY projects;
• People do not budget for their DIY projects; and
• People often use Google search and How-to Videos for help and advice.

Even more interestingly, in the dislikes category:

• People were frustrated when they underestimated the difficulty of and the time it would take to complete a DIY project;
• People were frustrated when they underestimated the cost of a DIY project; and
• People were disappointed when the final result was not as polished as they had anticipated.

Personas

In addition to overall patterns of behaviors, likes and dislikes, we also noticed patterns emerging in terms of the types of people who DIY. Specifically, we found that there are two DIY personas— the “handy” DIYer and the “crafty” DIYer. Although many of the pain points of our two personas were the same — namely incorrect expectations of time, difficulty and cost — their behaviors and needs were fairly distinct.

Our first persona was Brian. Brian, our “handy” DIYer, was the type of person who “shoots first and asks questions later.” He owns his home and is often fixing things around his house. When something breaks, he doesn’t do much advance planning. He just heads to the hardware store and, possibly with the advice of a store professional, picks up any supplies he thinks he may need. If he runs into problems along the way, he’ll use google search and how-to videos and will get help from friends and family. He doesn’t normally share his projects online in any way but might talk to family and friends about his projects if it comes up in conversation.

Our second persona was Caroline. Caroline, our “crafty” DIYer, was the type of person who loves building beautiful things. She collects inspiration from Pinterest and lifestyle blogs and when she has time, she’ll take on one of her planned passion projects. Like Brian, she will use Google search and how-to videos as well as advice from family and friends for help along the way. She is usually proud of her finished project and will share the project with others via Instagram or Facebook. She loves getting positive feedback on her work.

Feature Prioritization

Once we had established our two personas, my partner and I began brainstorming features for them. We came up with the following list of potential features:

1. How to videos and articles with photos
2. Time/cost/difficulty reviews from real people
3. Ability to purchase supplies by project
4. Inspiration boards/user photos
5. Ability to share finished projects
6. Expert/community forum for asking questions
7. Hire an expert for consult on a DIY project
8. Search for help/videos/articles
9. Place to store all photos/videos/articles/material list by project (including resources from external sites)
10. Hold phone up to space and see various projects overlaying the space (shelving/appliances/paint colors)
11. Use product SKU search in store to see inspiration projects that use the product

Given that we had a very short timeframe for this project, we knew we couldn’t design every feature we had brainstormed. We needed to prioritize.

Both personas relied heavily on how-to videos for help both before and during their DIY projects, so we decided to make how-to videos the central feature of our tool. Second, our user research showed that underestimating the time, cost and difficulty of projects was the primary pain point for DIYers so we wanted to ensure that our tool included reviews by real people. Third, our client had specifically asked us to design a feature that allows users to purchase supplies for their projects so we needed to include this feature as well. Fourth, we decided to incorporate a way for users to add photos of their projects and save photos of other users’ projects. This feature would both satisfy users’ frustrations with the end result not matching their imagined result since they would be able to see results by real people, and secondly, it would appeal to our second persona, Caroline, who collects inspiration for her projects and enjoys sharing her completed work.

Comparative Analysis

Having prioritized the features we would be designing for this project, my partner and I began researching comparative products for inspiration in terms of design and functionality. We first honed in on apps and websites in the food/recipe space that feature written or video recipes and allow users to purchase the relevant ingredients. Specifically, we looked at Yummy, Freshdirect, Allrecipes, and Whole Foods. We then looked at companies in inspiration space specifically Pinterest, Houzz and Artsy. Lastly, we researched websites and apps focusing on DIY, including Michaels and the DIY Network.

Design

With a good foundation of design ideas to work from, we began ideating. My partner and I decided to ideate seperately with pen and paper and then come together to discuss our ideas. This process worked incredibly well since it gave each of us the freedom to imagine our own solutions. And when we came together to discuss the ideas, we had lots of options to choose from. We spent a good deal of time discussing our ideas, honing in on the ones that we liked best, and further refining those ideas as a team with pen and paper.

Once we had agreed on the general design and functionality of the features, we created low fidelity wireframes that we tested with 5 users. The scenario we provided to our users was the following: You want to re-tile your bathroom but you don’t know how. And the tasks we gave them were the following:

1. Watch and save a video on how to grout
2. Look for and save some inspiration for your project
3. Purchase all the supplies you need for your project
4. Read reviews of grouting projects and add a review
5. Add a photo of your completed project

This first round of usability testing demonstrated that there were number of significant problems with our design. We created the following chart specifying the problem indicated from usability tests and our planned solution.

We quickly incorporated these changes into a second high fidelity prototype and again tested the revised design with 5 users. The second round testing revealed only minor problems. The following chart specifies the problems indicated from our second round usability tests and our planned solution.

Final Prototype

We implement our planned solutions and created a final prototype that can be found here: https://invis.io/4U7QT1LM9.

Next Steps

For next steps, we would plan to do an additional round of testing on our high fidelity prototype to see if we encounter any other usability problems. If not, our next step would be to begin the design process for some of the other features we had discussed — in particular, a feature allowing users to use a product SKU search in-store to see inspiration projects that utilize the product, a feature providing access to a expert/user forum for Q&A related to specific projects, and a virtual reality feature allowing users to view curated DIY projects in their actual space using the camera function.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this third project. My partner and I spent a lot of time on the user research for this project and I’m discovering that I truly enjoy interviewing people about their lives. I love learning, and interviewing people is just another form of learning. I get a sneak peek into other people’s lives and get to learn something about their world. And then I am able to take this knowledge and use it to design solutions that will hopefully make their lives better. It’s hard to imagine a cooler job.

I also love working in teams. As a lawyer, most of my work was with teams — oftentimes teams with 10+ members and sometimes teams of 70+ members. It was challenging to manage so many different stakeholders and interests but I enjoyed the challenge. One of my friends at my prior law firm, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, jokingly called me the “Mayor of Cleary.” I was secretly delighted by this joke.

Looking forward to the next phase of UXDI where we get to go even deeper into the real UX design process.