Due to a Non-Disclosure Agreements, the information on this project is limited. Scalable & Modular Design Language
Introduction
At The Home Depot, my goal was to lead the evolution of the online brand experience by developing a scalable, modular design system. This system would support diverse user needs, enhance internal transparency, accelerate production, and incorporate customer feedback. The approach aimed to improve usability while adhering to WCAG AA compliance standards, ensuring a seamless, inclusive experience across platforms.
So, what’s the problem?
The original UI/UX language was outdated and needed a comprehensive overhaul to meet modern digital standards and global brand requirements. As a strategic leader, I spearheaded the unification of diverse teams—Product Design, UX Research, Content Strategy, and Engineering—aligning processes, creating unified documentation, and fostering collaboration across disciplines. By driving clear communication and focusing on a cohesive design system, I eliminated silos, ensured shared goals, and facilitated the adoption of standardized processes, achieving consistent, high-quality results aligned with the broader brand vision.
- Mentored over 200 associates across Product Design, UX Research, and other disciplines to ensure seamless documentation and a strong process foundation.
- Developed a growth strategy to educate leadership with data, analytics, and research, ensuring technical feasibility and design consistency throughout the project.
Responsibilities
- Developing a scalable design system: Established a modular, scalable design system for The Home Depot’s digital touchpoints, ensuring brand consistency and adaptability across platforms.
- Cross-functional leadership: Led efforts to align cross-functional teams, breaking down silos, and promoted system adoption through stakeholder education and documentation.
Team members involved
- Led a team of 200+ in UX design, content strategy, engineering, and product management to unify design elements, documentation, and system processes.
- System alignment & tools: Drove adoption and consistency through CMS platforms, Adobe XD/Sketch, and InVision, ensuring alignment across dot-com, enterprise, and marketing channels.
Timeline & structure summary
- First 6 Months: Audit and align components, create documentation, and conduct user testing to set up consistent workflows across UX, content, and engineering teams.
- Next 6 Months: Scale design elements, refine usability, and drive adoption through iterative releases and cross-functional training for cohesive standards across platforms.
Skills
- Design systems & prototyping: Implemented live qualitative testing and metric-based analysis to refine reusable components based on real user behaviors, enhancing scalability and consistency across platforms.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Aligned design, engineering, and product management teams across The Home Depot’s retail dot-com, enterprise, and marketing divisions to ensure cohesive execution, streamlined system adoption, and a consistent brand experience across all customer touchpoints.
Understanding the core teams/personas
First it was a matter of all the Home Depot teams understanding the existent of their ecosystem and what role they play within the brands core values and overall voice.
Dotcom / CMS
App
Decor
Pro
CRM
Signage
Breaking down silos
Educating and helping these teams understand system design was not an easy task, but at the core of all this teams wanted to have a single source of truth for consistency at scale. The ultimate goal was to design / maintain / evolve / together as one Home Depot core group.
I’ve got data + research now what do we do with it?
Together the brand squad looked at past research defined by each group. Promotions, Sales, received expensed-cause and effect from the last three years.
We also generated new tests via User Testing within our respected channels. Solely focused on the human/customer rather than old agency methodologies to gather controlled experiments on new possible solutions all targeting our core user base.
Each dollar counts, again we didn’t get to become the leader in home improvement over night. We wanted this research to go beyond the data and have this be the seed for opportunities to manifest within the business.
DESIGNING FOR ENTERPRISE
A large unification effort
INTERPRETING MATERIAL
Macro Goals
PREPPING FOR THE DESIGN SYSTEM
Audit existing (Atomic, Element, Modules)
Make it much easier to convert to material by setting current designs up to swap out one component for each rather than redesigning each screen.
“Taking from our Material Design, the few redesigned atomic levels on our list. Thinking within user touch points, future renders on multiple devices, and always thinking about product clarity to reduce clutter and improve on customer satisfaction.”
Create documentation for our multiple squads – engineers to inform them while exploration, testing, build, adoption. Our 10 commandments ie. playbook for pattern change.
EXPLORING WITH MATERIAL
I saw this as an opportunity to explore – champion the much-needed functionality and process of educating out to squads at a larger scope further increasing the overall value of our Design System. So, creating a clear process for communities to duplicate and leverage was key. Roadmap creation, prioritizing scopes, user feedback, leadership buy ins, execution, development, adoption, new possibilities teaching Material Design.
CONTINUOUS EDUCATION WITHIN HD DESIGN SYSTEM
Final Thoughts
Communicate strategic ideation & implementation.
Discussing priorities and effort levels with engineering teams helped prioritize design efforts and built more trust and respect between the design and engineering teams.
