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DIY Hive

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Hive

Powered by The Home Depot, Hive is a project management and social media app for builders & creators to find inspiration, manage projects, and share their DIY creations with others.

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The team

Lenet Ron,

Christina Yu &

Samira Fakhravar as collaborative end-to-end UX/UI Designers

Tools

Figma

Canva

Optimal Workshop

REsearch Methods

Heuristic Evaluation

Screening Survey

User Interviews

Affinity Mapping

Journey Map

MSCW Chart

Design Studio x5

Timeline

2 weeks

A Conceptual Home Depot project

THE CHALLENGE

Home Depot's app lacks vital DIY features that would support DIY enthusiasts with their work.

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Home Depot's app has a variety of robust features including store maps, computer-vision scanners, and augmented reality space-planning tools.

Although Home Depot has made a lot of great improvements to its smartphone app, it doesn’t help users plan and track their own DIY projects.

 

User research suggests that shoppers want a tool to help them brainstorm, plan, track, and document their DIY projects. 

After reevaluating The Home Depot's app in a heuristic evaluation, we found that the image recognition camera and personal profile features could be useful features to grandfather over to a new DIY app.

But at this point, we were unsure whether or not we would be creating an entirely new app or if our research would lead us to do a redesign of Home Depot's current app - so we decided to go straight to the users to see how they felt.

THE DISCOVERY

Our team considered keeping certain features of the app but decided to consult DIY enthusiasts for their feedback.

So we began our investigation...

 

We began our study with a survey to identify people who either 1) regularly shopped at Home Depot or 2) considered themselves DIY enthusiasts. From there, we recruited 10 qualifying participants and interviewed them to understand their needs, motives, and frustrations around creating DIY projects. After reviewing their answers through affinity mapping, we started to find a pattern - ALL of our participants said they: 

Want to plan & track their DIY projects

Look for inspiration from others

Enjoy feeling proud of their final projects

THE DEFINITION

Putting a project together brought as much joy as finding inspiration for the project and feeling accomplished upon completing it.

We were surprised by our results. According to the DIY enthusiasts we interviewed, the feelings that came both before and after completing a project were just as important as the planning and tracking that take place during the project.

I enjoy browsing and getting ideas for new projects or tools.

DIY projects provide a sense of accomplishment from creating something with your own hands.

Putting their feedback together, we made a persona to synthesize and communicate our users' thoughts.

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THE Problem

DIY enthusiasts lack an effective project management tool, causing frustration and a lack of confidence. Without this tool, David struggles to confidently select the right materials, receive expert advice and inspiration, and cannot effectively manage his DIY projects on his own. 

David needs a way to confidently
select, plan, and track his DIY tools and projects so that he can feel accomplished and proud of his finished DIY projects.

THE Design

Finding the problem was not finding the solution. We dove into brainstorming session after brainstorming session until we finally found - and agreed upon - THE design.
 

After identifying David's problem, we were still stuck with finding a solution -- how do we address David's concerns and needs in a product? We started asking ourselves, "How might we" (HMW) questions to begin brainstorming potential solutions.

1

HMW create a tool within the Home Depot app that helps David manage his projects?

2

HMW assist David in receiving expert advice and inspiration?

3

HMW create a feature within the app where users can share their DIY projects, tips, and advice with others?

4

HMW help David feel accomplished and proud of his DIY achievements?

Asking ourselves HMW questions gave us a bigger picture of what a few solutions could look like. This helped us put our questions onto paper and start sketching n a design studio - aka a brainstorming sketch session. After each of us worked independently for 20 minutes, we came back at the end of our design studio with a wide variety of solutions...in fact, we had TOO many solutions.

 

With a ton of solutions and an excessive accumulation of features, we decided to head back into our design studio to narrow in on priority features. After meeting again post-design studio 2.0, we had our priorities in order. In our MSCW chart, we decided our app:

Must Have

Should Have

Won't Have

  • Step-by-step project management

  • Chatbot

  • Inspirational feed

  • Option to share projects

  • Social media features

  • Personal user profile

  • Bookmark feature

  • Task project tracker

  • Tutorials

  • Home Depot's original barcode

  • Links to Home Depot's products

  • Option to purchase tools

And after several iterations of sketches, we decided to move forward from the Home Depot app and create an entirely new app.

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THE Solution

Hive is a social media-driven DIY and project management app that empowers users like David to find project inspiration and confidently select, plan, and share their DIY projects with others. 

Hive features a
project planner, 24/7 customer support, and image recognition tools ultimately giving David confidence when creating his DIY project, as well as a sense of accomplishment when sharing his finished DIY with friends.

Our first iteration of lo-fi wireframes was focused on guiding the user through inspirational posts and then selecting their own project to work on. The user would complete step-by-step tutorials and have access to a live representative for help at any time. Lastly, they would be able to post the project on the Hive community feed and share their product with friends.

App Userflow

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Our first iteration of wireframes

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To test the usability of our first prototype, we asked 5 users to use our app with the following task in mind:

You just bought their first house. You want to personalize your space and create a floating shelf for some books. Please show us how you would find inspiration for a “floating shelf” project, complete it, and share it.

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4/5 users were confused at what happens after adding project to board

3/5 users were unsure if their post was shared, and where it would be shared to

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5/5 users took the longest time finding out how to begin their project

Putting their feedback together, we saw this as an opportunity to incorporate some changes into Hive's high-fidelity prototype.

THE Deliverable

The final mockup included reduced steps to find an added project, a larger, seamless step-by-step project management function, and a social media feed called the Hive. Users can now confidently find their in-progress projects, visibly track their progress by checking off steps, and feel excited about posting their final products on the Hive social feed.

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