A seamless cross-channel experience
Developing a simpler, more approachable digital carpet experience.
Client
The Home Depot
Duration
3 months
Services
iOS app design, user testing & research, UX & wireframing, prototyping.
Project Overview
Understand the disjointed cross-channel experiences and decentralized inputs that are creating significant burdens on our customers, employees, and partners in order to facilitate a flow across those channels and onward from consideration through installation.
Roles & Responsibilities
Interviewed a variety of stakeholders across eight functional teams, installation partners, and recent carpet customers in order to define a service blueprint for the cross-channel experience. Synthesized learnings across the customer journey from consideration through installation and formed archetypes to better understand their decision-making process. Built journey maps for each archetype, and through evaluative research identified the most important needs to inform a single integrated design concept. Defined the final experience with wireframes and a functional prototype.
Program plan
Immersion
Stakeholder interviews
Synthesis
Competitive analysis
Current state CX immersion
Working sessions
4 weeks
Concept Generating
Concept ideation
Concept creation
Remote testing
Down selection
4 weeks
Design & Delivery
Flow development & refinement
Experience definition
Documentation & handoff
4 weeks
Interview we conducted
Stakeholders
15 stakeholders across eight functional teams, as well as installation partners
Themes
Too many players
THD outsources every step of the carpet installation process so ordering and installing them is complicated.
No cross-communication
There is no single platform where everyone involved has a way to communicate.
Education barrier
The current experience doesn’t account for the entire carpet buying process, just carpet selection.
Customers
11 customers across all phases of the journey, from consideration through installation
Themes
Carpet education barrier
Most customers don’t understand the different carpet types and which is best for their specific lifestyle/need.
Carpet process education barrier
Most customers don’t understand estimations, total cost, ordering or installation processes.
Too many players
Customers assume THD is the source of truth for their questions and get frustrated when they can’t help them.
Mapping of current ecosystem
Service blueprint tracking all touchpoints in the customer journey along with pain points we heard from our interviews. A theme we confirmed was that there were too many touchpoints and people involved.
Customer experience audit
Screen-by-screen audit mapping out the current customer experience along with pain points we heard from our interviews. Many people felt like this experience was disjointed, and a lot of steps either come too soon (talking to a representative) or come to late (browsing carpets).
Assumptions based on data for current carpet journey funnel
Enter rooms
After talking with customers and examining the current state of the experience, we assumed that people found the task of entering their room information tedious.
Start form
We found that people’s estimation for how much they predicted to spend was very off, so we assumed many drop after they receive their estimation in the previous stage.
Project information
Many customers said they put a lot of things in the cart, but because there are so many people involved with the measurement process, this task goes unfinished.
Customer interview synthesis
After talking to our customers, we synthesized them into 4 main archetypes so we could design an experience that directly caters to their priority needs.
Potential approaches for MVP
Archetype focused
Addresses 100% of needs for 1 customer type
Advantage
Increased the chances of fully winning over one specific customer segment
Tradeoff
Potentially miss out on other customer types by not addressing enough of their secondary needs
Priority-needs focused (chosen)
Addresses all top needs for all customer types
Advantage
Appeals to the largest pool of customers across all stages of the journey
Tradeoff
While ‘quite strong’ for many, less likely to be 100% perfect for any particular one
According to the customers we interviewed, an important part of the consideration phase was the estimated cost of their project as price was an important factor when you’re determining the scope of work. By providing upfront estimations based on room type, customers can start a project with a better sense of the final cost.
The world of carpets is a vast landscape with a seemingly unlimited variety. Allowing the customer to search and filter by intended use, virtually preview carpets in their own home, and save a library of favorites with total estimations, the final carpet assignment feels easy and assuring.
The carpet buying journey has three phases, the last being installation, which included the most friction from customers. Throughout our interviews we found that the top needs of customers included scheduling (when the carpet is going to be installed and how long it will take), contacting (who is the point of contact for the installation as The Home Depot hires third-party partners), and preparation (what are the installers taking care of, what can I do to prepare, and how to disassemble furniture).
