Homer Fund

Overview

The Home Depot is always about the value that can give back to our communities. We serve at the level of natural disasters as well as the les fortunate. The Home Depot associates investing their time health and well being for the company also has a return in the same way. The Homer Fund is a way to give back to the associate in need with benefits that ensure sustained resources as well as the covering of medical bills beyond insured benefit.

My role: Team lead of UX and Product driving strategic planning and execution

UX Strategist: Trey Banks

Product Strategist: Trey Banks

Additional stakeholders on the team: Lead Engineer, Architect, Sr. Manager Engineer, Director of Homer Fund

Problem Statement:

Donating to The Homer Fund internally as a non profit is essential to keep the support for associates moving forward. The application in the current state does not allow for everyday associates to donate through self service in the system. A lead in the company would always be required to enter the donation manually into the system. This is impacting both the amount of donations going forward and the frequency of donation with availability and access.

Opportunity:

Design a product that allows mobile first thinking and experience focus. This offering would make it easy for associates to access through our HR self service tools to be able to donate both inflating donation amounts and by who donates simplifying access.

Research:

I conducted associate volunteer donator interviews. These interviews made it possible for me to see what associates who were interested in donating wanted to see in the flexibility of such. How might we create an experience that simplifies the associate flexibility and access to donate from the palm of their hand.

Persona Identification:

The key to understanding what to build for was to understand who we are building for. In 2022 the speed to task is essential to create useful and usable products. We needed to learn about our associate who looks to donate more than anything regarding the current state.

Competitive Analysis:

Learning from other strong mobile donation tools was important to understand how The Home Depot should move forward for the future. The key in this effort was to drive an MVP to learn from the viability and user constraints.

Execution Strategy:

Due to the annual donations campaign completing this work was imperative. Collectively all work was strategically planned out however led by UX in planning. I conducted various phases of requirements gathering with limited planning due to no Product Manager but completing success network, engineering and roadmapping.

Designs:

With the product strategy and lifecycle in mind and minimalist and efficient process was key in the design. See in order how to donate.

Outcome:

After successfully testing this and launching the first phase of this MVP to the associates there a 36% increase in donations. The Homer Fund donations committee has reported that there was a record donation in 2023 most recently during the summer campaign season. New designs and iterations are to come both highlighting administrative tasks and more tender types to donate through such as Cash app and Paypal.