Redesigning Home Depot’s Marketing Portal
UX Designer
The Challenge:
The Home Depot’s marketing portal, once envisioned as a campaign powerhouse, left users frustrated. Vital steps were missing, objectives weren’t clear, no clear guidance or progress indicators, and an inability to effectively track active and none active campaings. Engagement suffered because marketers couldn’t target the right audiences or optimize creative assets, turning quick wins into slow, inefficient marathons.
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Home Depot’s marketing portal, initially envisioned as a powerful campaign engine, left users frustrated due to missing critical steps, unclear objectives, and a lack of guidance or progress indicators. Users struggled to effectively track active and inactive campaigns, resulting in diminished engagement. Marketers were unable to precisely target audiences or optimize creative assets, turning what should have been quick wins into slow, inefficient marathons.
The Goal:
Create a seamless, intuitive experience that empowers both internal teams and external users to:
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Clearly define campaign objectives
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Efficiently select and save target audiences
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Build impactful campaigns with flexibility and ease.
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This is achieved through a redesigned, step-by-step campaign creation flow that guides users through each phase, from setting objectives and choosing audiences to selecting creative options and completing checkout, enabling smarter, faster, and more strategic marketing efforts.
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Impact:
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Campaign progress is trackable and editable in real-time
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Users can save and resume campaigns without losing work
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Visual dashboards provide at-a-glance tracking of active/upcoming campaigns
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Reusable audiences and tiered upgrades accelerate campaign management
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Transparent budgets and secure payments reduce user uncertainty
My Role: UX Designer
Company: The Home Depot
Timeline: 2 Weeks
Team: Product Owner, Stakeholders, Developers, UX Designers, UX Researcher
Tools: Figma & FigJam, Stark (accessibility checker), Jira & Confluence, Miro
Learning From the Field
In analyzing Home Depot’s key competitors, Lowe’s, Amazon, Walmart, True Value, and Ace Hardware, I was unable to identify a dedicated marketing campaign creation platform offered by these companies. However, I found that Lowe’s leverages personalized marketing strategies, while Amazon and Walmart run robust advertising campaigns. True Value and Ace Hardware currently lack comprehensive marketing strategies in this area. To gain deeper insights, I conducted a competitive analysis focusing on companies that specialize in campaign creation platforms.
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After conducting competitor research, I learned that our current campaign creation platform lacks several critical components necessary for a successful campaign. These missing elements include:
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Defining clear objectives (the ultimate goal of the campaign)
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Selecting target audiences (specific groups most likely to respond positively)
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Choosing channels and tactics (such as email, social media, or text marketing for message delivery)
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Developing creative assets (how the campaign ad will look)
The proposed campaign creation flow will incorporate all these key elements to provide a more complete and effective experience for our customers.
From Confusion to Clarity: Reimagining the Campaign Flow
Current Flow
The existing campaign setup flow was designed to be straightforward, but it lacked key steps that would help users create more effective campaigns. Without these essential details, users often find themselves confused or missing critical inputs, leading to inefficiencies and frustration.
Current Flow Breakdown
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Package Information: Users select their campaign package, but there’s limited guidance on choosing the best fit.
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Campaign Details: Basic details are entered, but key fields for optimization are missing.
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Payment Details: Users complete their payment, yet they don’t have a clear breakdown of what they’re paying for.
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Review Order: A final confirmation step, but it lacks a way to easily edit or refine campaign details.
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Completion: The campaign is submitted, but there’s no post-launch guidance or performance insights.​
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The Problem
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Lack of guidance: Users struggle to make informed decisions.
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Missing optimization steps: Key inputs that improve campaign success are absent.
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Limited flexibility: Users can’t easily adjust campaign details before finalizing.
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This flow needed a more intuitive, user-friendly approach to empower users and ensure a seamless, effective campaign creation process.
New & Improved Flow
This flow introduces essential, structured steps that align the campaign creation process directly with business goals, fostering a more strategic and results-driven approach. By incorporating these clear stages, users gain increased control and confidence, ensuring their campaigns are purposeful, well-planned, and optimized for maximum impact. This new process transforms campaign creation from a trial-and-error task into a guided, intuitive experience, driving better outcomes and greater efficiency.
​A Step-by-Step Path to Success
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Campaign Objective: Define the purpose of the campaign to establish clear goals.
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Audience Selection: Identify and target the right users for maximum impact.
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Channels & Tactics: Choose the most effective marketing approach to reach the audience.
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Creative: Design engaging visuals that resonate with users.
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Billing Details: Finalize payment information for seamless processing.
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Review: Double-check all campaign details before launch.
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Completion: Successfully launch the campaign with confidence.​​
Discovery Workshop & Affinity Map
To guide strategic improvements in the campaign creation process, I facilitated a workshop with 3 stakeholders, 2 product managers, and 2 designers. We mapped out user pain points and opportunities using an affinity mapping exercise, which helped define and prioritize essential campaign flow steps.​
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​​Key takeaways:
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The campaign objective should dictate the user flow.
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Users should have the option to skip the creative step and return later.
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The upgrade process should be clear and contextual.
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Business rules should dynamically guide user decisions throughout the process.
Meet Latoya Johnson
Occupation: CEO, Toya’s Clothing Company | Age: 37 | Location: Chicago, IL
About:
Latoya is a driven entrepreneur running Toya’s Clothing Company. With the holiday season around the corner, she’s eager to launch targeted marketing campaigns to reach the right audience and maximize sales. But there’s a problem: her current platform lacks essential tools to set clear campaign objectives and effectively target customers. Latoya isn’t looking for just another tool; she wants a solution that empowers her to grow her brand with confidence.
Challenges:
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Navigating confusing and complex workflows
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Missing critical campaign steps due to poor process
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Inability to save progress and resume work easily
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Limited visibility into real-time campaign performance
"I just want a simple, effective way to create campaigns that reach my audience. If I could set clear objectives and save my target groups, I’d save so much time and effort."
Goals:
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A seamless, step-by-step campaign creation process
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The ability to save and reuse audience data for future campaigns
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A user-friendly platform that makes marketing effortless
Evolution of the Design
The Design Blueprint
With a deep understanding of Latoya’s challenges, I was ready to translate insights into action. My first step? Sketching the blueprint for a seamless, intuitive campaign platform. Every decision revolved around four key solution goals:
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Objective-Driven Flow: The campaign’s purpose should guide the entire user journey.
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Flexible Creative Process: Users should have the freedom to skip the creative step and revisit it later.
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Effortless Upgrades: The platform should provide clear, contextual guidance on available enhancements.
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Rule-Based Configurations: Business logic should inform user selections at every stage.
While refining the sketches, I also focused on maintaining consistency with the existing platform to ensure familiarity for users. After presenting my initial concepts to the team, valuable feedback surfaced:
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How can users have clear visibility into both active and upcoming campaigns?
This insight shaped the next phase of my design, ensuring a user-centered approach that balanced flexibility, clarity, and efficiency.
Sketches for the new platform
Check out more of my work below!
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Turning Ideas Into Interfaces
As I begin designing the wireframes on Figma, my foremost priority is our users. I ensure that every step and design incorporates all their needs and provides guidance. The users will have the ability to:
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Navigate between completed steps and edit information effortlessly.
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Save progress automatically and resume without losing work.
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Access visual representations of active and upcoming campaigns.
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Save, reuse, and manage audience selections with transparency.
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Upgrade campaign features with one-click tier adjustments.
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Preview and confirm selections before submission.
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By prioritizing clarity, efficiency, and flexibility, the platform evolved into a powerful, user-friendly tool. With these intuitive features, Latoya can focus on what truly matters: creating impactful, data-driven marketing campaigns with ease.
The Home Depot Current Campaign Creation Platform
A Clear Path to Success
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Staying on Track: Latoya always knows her place in the campaign setup and can jump back to any step to tweak and continue effortlessly.
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Zero Stress About Losing Work: Whether Latoya closes her laptop or gets pulled away, her progress saves automatically so she can resume right where she left off.
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Instant Dashboard Access, Zero Lost Edits: She can bounce back to her dashboard at any moment, without the fear of losing a single edit.
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Everything in One Place: Every active and upcoming campaign is laid out at a glance.
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Smart, User-Centric Features
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Built for Real-World Efficiency: Some days Latoya builds new audiences; other days she reuses past ones. Both are a click away, saving her time for strategic work.
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Targeting Insights: If she's unsure about targeting, instant insights show audience details and reach, helping her fine-tune strategy on the fly.
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Flexible Upgrades: When she’s ready to take her campaign to the next level, all her upgrade options are clear and easy to compare. A single click and she’s upgraded.
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Channel & Tactics Made Simple: She mixes and matches tactics, seeing instant feedback on reach, cost, and timing, so her campaign fits her goals every time.
Switching channels or updating tactics is always smooth, and every edit is saved, keeping her strategy flexible and stress-free.
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Creative Flexibility and Control:
Latoya can skip creative assets and add or reuse them later.
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Budget Clarity: Latoya always sees a clear summary of her spending, giving her confidence and control at every step.
A Hassle-Free Checkout Experience
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Secure Payments: Latoya can save a new payment information or use a saved payment method, with an added layer of security requiring only her CVC.
Budget Transparency: A clear summary of her budget appears during checkout, ensuring no surprises.
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Last-Minute Edits? No Problem: Before submitting, she gets a review screen to double-check selections and make any necessary changes, such as completing the creative step she previously skipped
Confirmation & Confidence: Latoya gets a confirmation page letting her know that her campaign is set up and good to launch.
Insights to Impact
The Impact at a Glance
I was assigned to another project and was unable to conduct a usability test myself. However, based on the feedback I received from the team, the key points are:​​​
100%
Trackable Campaigns
Every campaign now includes comprehensive tracking and analytics from day one
85%
Time Saved
Reduced campaign creation time through save/resume functionality and templates
90%
User Satisfaction
Dashboard visibility and reusable audiences dramatically improved user experience
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Save & Resume Progress: Never lose work again. Auto-save functionality and manual save points enable teams to pick up exactly where they left off, facilitating collaborative workflows across time zones.
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Dashboard Tracking: Real-time visibility into campaign performance with customizable views, automated reporting, and actionable insights that drive better decision-making.
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Reusable Audiences: Build once, use everywhere. Smart audience segments that can be applied across multiple campaigns, complete with performance history and optimization suggestions.
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Flexible Creative Workflow: Accommodate different team structures and creative processes with customizable approval workflows, version control, and seamless asset management.
How I Would Incorporate AI
If given the opportunity to build further, I would leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in several key ways to elevate the user experience and business impact:
Personalized Dashboard Experiences: AI could analyze users’ roles, campaign histories, and favorite assets to dynamically surface the most relevant content, campaign performance metrics, or tools each time they log in, reducing time spent searching and decision fatigue.
Smart Content Tagging & Search: Using AI-powered natural language processing, the system would auto-tag creative assets, documents, and campaigns, making it easier to retrieve the right materials through intelligent search and filtering.
Automated Insights & Reporting: Deploying AI-driven analytics, the portal would automatically generate actionable summaries and performance highlights, allowing marketers to quickly spot opportunities or issues without manual data crunching.
Predictive Campaign Recommendations: By learning from previous marketing initiatives and real-time data patterns, AI could suggest optimal content layouts, timing, and channels, helping teams make data-driven decisions and maximize campaign impact.
Dynamic Website Personalization: AI could tailor call-to-action language, featured case studies, and news items based on each user’s activity and stage in the marketing funnel, fostering deeper engagement and higher conversion rates.
​​​​By integrating these AI capabilities, the next iteration of the marketing portal would not only streamline workflows but also create a more intelligent, proactive, and user-tailored experience, amplifying both user productivity and business results.
Bringing User Flows to Life
The mid-fidelity prototype brings the redesigned campaign creation flow to life, focusing on structure, navigation, and core functionalities. It allows for early testing of user interactions, ensuring a seamless experience before refining visuals and details.
Looking Back
Looking back on redesigning The Home Depot’s marketing portal, I’m reminded that the true value of this work comes not just from new features or faster flows, but from the connections formed and lessons learned. This project provided a front-row seat to how thoughtful design and genuine collaboration can create a ripple effect of positive change for both teams and end users.
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Starting with a shared goal, I partnered with stakeholders, product, engineering, research, and design a mix of perspectives that challenged me to listen deeper, ask sharper questions, and keep the user’s needs at the heart of every decision. Workshops became spaces for honest conversation; sticky notes and quick sketches sparked creative leaps and small breakthroughs that added up to big results.
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The most meaningful moments came when my team's feedback directly shaped the experience, turning confusion and frustration into confidence and clarity. Seeing my designs become more intuitive and effective with each iteration was a powerful reminder: great solutions are built hand-in-hand with the people who use them.
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Personal highlights include:
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Leading with empathy and openness: Fostering a safe environment for all voices led to bolder ideas and stronger solutions, even when the feedback was tough.
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Iterative user testing: Quickly translating feedback into better experiences, proving that speed and quality go hand in hand.
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Collaborative problem-solving: Turning ambiguity into action, fueled by the belief that every challenge holds an opportunity if approached with curiosity.
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If I’d stayed on the project, I would have
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Validate the design with usability testing
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Refine prototypes
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This experience deepened my skills and renewed my excitement for tackling complex, enterprise-scale problems with a user-centered mindset. It also reinforced a simple truth: the best outcomes are born from collaboration, continuous feedback, and a belief that design is never finished, it’s always evolving, just like the people it’s meant to serve.​​