Case Study: The Home Depot Workbench App
First: Some Housekeeping...
This product was designed *SPECIFICALLY* for display on iPad in landscape mode. It is (decidedly) not a responsive design product. To that end, the driving container is set at 1024px wide by 768px deep.
Most of the triggers are coded for things like, “click” and “keydown” instead of specific touch (“touchstart,” etc.) events. Again... that’s just an accommodation for this particular prototype.
As far as logic goes... it was easy enough to do the logic on form elements (and boolean logic where needed) but I did absolutely no validation on “what IS a valid phone number” or “what IS a valid email addy,” or record duplication (and such). Needless to say, this is a prototype and doing so would be irrelevant for its purpose.
Overview
The Workbench is the corporate-specific entity that facilitates IT technical and device support across the entire domain of The Home Depot. There are multiple locations in multiple states. The Workbench group services thousands of requests a day ranging from queries about software, repairs, and credentialing through their single sign-on services (LDAP). The registration software used to place Associates in the wait queue, however, was a “Frankenstein-ed” adaptation and offered almost no actionable data for Workbench personnel to assess the Associate’s issues beforehand. Data necessary to manage the workload was often duplicated as information that was keyed in by an Associate was unavailable to the Workbench staff in digital form. Workbench staff kept paper records of Associate interactions leaving the registration application nothing more than a “line-keeper” (and a poor performing one, at that).
What I Did
Research was the first order of business. I made several visits to The Workbench at the Store Support Center (their flagship Workbench) and sat through a number of interactions. I interviewed Workbench staff and customer Associates alike gauging satisfaction, ease-of-use, quality of service, and internal systems used by Workbench staff to track and manage their case-load.
When this initial research engagement was complete, I circled back to my engineering team and interviewed them about what was possible to know when an Associate presented themselves to The Workbench. Surprisingly, the LDAP (Associates are assigned) presents a wealth of data including not only their name, department (and essentials) but also every digital device assigned to them by The Home Depot. With this information in-hand, our small team could begin to imagine a more user-friendly and quantifiably better system for Workbench staff to manage and engage with Associates on specific technical issues.
The Solution
Paper drafts were constructed covering the newly-identified requirements and sketches were discussed with the engineering team around the topic of viability (and how data would be collected, acted upon, stored, and presented). Contextual interviews and heuristic evaluations resulted in annotated wireframes in support of the drafts. This prototype was constructed in support of the Sketch comps.
User Feedback and My Notes:
Them: “Very clean. Easy to understand.”
Me: The “game” (as it were) was to get the THD Associate in front of a living, breathing technical support professional as fast as prudently possible. My first presupposition concerning the software product was, “the Associate isn’t there to chat... something is wrong (with a device, software, etc.) that impacts their productivity... and they want it fixed, and that,—as soon as possible.” I eliminated anything from the design that didn’t contribute to that outcome. This feedback, then, was noted (and appreciated).
Them: “Didn’t have to know much to use the {software}.”
Me: Agreed! If you are a THD Associate, all you would have to know is your LDAP and THD Associates use that EVERY DAY! It’s memorized. After that? The software knows, a) where you sit in the organization; b) your contact number (especially if you have a THD-issued mobile device), and; c) your email issued by The Home Depot. Those fields are pre-populated based on the LDAP credential, so... yah... I won’t need much from you. Theoretically? If you know your LDAP (and you DO), this software can get you into The Workbench queue in under ten (10!) seconds. It’s hard to overstate how much positive brand trust (The Workbench) you can generate from being quick and accurate.
Them: “I love (!) the paging system.” (Emphasis mine.)
Me: I sorta knew you would. The technical integration was a “no-brainer” so it just stood to follow. The thing about THD Associates is this: there isn’t a SINGLE ONE that isn’t doing three things at once. A properly-motivated designer will understand this and respect the reality of the observation (talk to your users!).
Take—for example—Associates located at the Store Support Center in Smyrna, Georgia. With the paging system instantiated, the Associate could go to the Starbucks (located on site), make phone calls, meet with cohorts, (AND) be notified their Workbench interface is due in five minutes by text/email notification. Up the “C” elevators and... {boom}. This was a KILLER feature.
Me (this time): For those of you who are particular about “where mice/fingers are” during a series of interactions, make note I thought about this and planned out certain screen placement of elements with that specifically in mind.
