Home Depot Active Engagement App

Inspiration

We all know the feeling of being forced to sit down to learn something new, whether it be from a manual, or a website designed in 2005, it was brutal, but that pay-check was a good enough incentive to keep us going. Whatever we learned that day, probably left our brains the same day.

The experience of learning straight from a manual is a completely different experience from going and experience it first-hand. This is what active learning entails. Active learning is an effective method used in an academic environment, allowing students to be engaged in what they are learning. The same methodologies can be applied to individuals learning new information, in this case, learning about the new products at Home Depot.

What it does

The app engages employees through incentives, visually-stimulating activities, and force the employees to explore the store and learn about the products first-hand. All of these methodologies incorporated into the design of the app will strengthen the overall learning experience of the employees.

How do we keep employees engaged with the latest news and products? Incentives! Home Depot constantly have new products, sales, and promotions. To keep employees up to date, we reward the employees with a point systems which can be redeemable for prizes. Employees will have to accomplish certain tasks, for example, watch a video, finish a quiz, or scan a barcode, in order to receive points.

How we built it

Since we are industrial designers with no coding background, we used existing apps and our experiences as references to what technology is available. We prototyped the user interface elements with programs such as Sketch, Adobe Illustrator, and Invision, to produce a looks-like working prototype.

Challenges we ran into

It was difficult to find a way to engage employees. People would naturally find loop-holes into the system, for example, a person would not be reading the information and would just guess the answer for the tests. We resolve this by simply not giving them the answer if it is incorrect, but allowing them to try until they get it correct.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We really considered the user experience behind the design of the app. We did not want to overly complicate the design of the app, so it's intuitive and simple to use for the employees and their supervisors. We really believe we found a balance between incentives and engagement for the employees at Home Depot, and generally any retailer, to better employees on-boarding experience, and overall, knowledge.

What we learned

We learned there are many routes you can take to code. There is a endless sea of resources out there that can simplify your workflow, it just the matter of fact of knowing how to use them well and efficiently. We didn't have any background in coding whatsoever coming into this event, after talking to mentors and different companies, we familiarized ourselves with the basic knowledge of coding.

What's next for Active Learning for Home Depot Employees

Home Depot Active Engagement App has potential to be applied not only in the retail sector, but perhaps other sectors. People are constantly learning, and the best way to learn, is through engagement. Our next step is attempt to develop the app from the knowledge obtained from this event.