Store Associate Proxy User Research Pool

The Home Depot EUX team had a major issue. The Covid Protocols that corporate had enacted meant that we would no longer be able to go into stores to do store research with associates, which is CRUCIAL for 90% of our work, as we for keenly focused on tools and processes that service the associates.

With dozens of projects in progress, all work would effectively stop and EUX would not be about continue working. We needed a way to continue our work, but more importantly, we needed a vehicle that would facilitate all our efforts moving forward because it was unknown how long the prohibition would be in place or if it would ever be reversed.

The THD corporate culture is unique in that many employees have started their careers in various roles and departments within the stores. Despite having a Yammer community to communicate with in-store associates, we were unable to burden them with additional tasks during the pandemic.

This situation required us to seek out other individuals with the necessary experience and perspectives from different store departments to provide feedback on our projects and help us develop effective solutions that cater to the needs of store associates.

To address this issue, we came up with the idea of leveraging former in-store employees who now work on product teams as proxies to provide immediate feedback. This approach allowed us to validate the problems we needed to solve, as well as the solutions we created, while also ensuring that our valuable work continued without any hiccups.

To expand the pool of proxies further, we collaborated with the communications team to launch a recruitment campaign that utilized various communication channels, such as word of mouth and the warehouse, to attract a diverse range of subject matter experts for all areas and roles. This effort resulted in a vast collection of proxy SMEs that have since provided valuable insights and feedback, helping us achieve our goals effectively and efficiently.