Homecenter app
What started as a standard request: build an e-commerce app for Homecenter, turned into something bigger once user research showed people didn't want to replace their in-store experience, they wanted to enhance it. Through social listening and guerrilla testing, I helped reframe the product from a simple online store into a companion app to scan, explore, and buy in-store, then have it delivered home
Role
UX Designer
Outcome
A new app that complements and does not replace the brick and mortar store
Uncovering What Users Actually Wanted
The initial ask was straightforward: design an e-commerce app for the store, a fairly standard requirement in retail. But rather than take the brief at face value, I pushed to understand the real motivations behind why users would, or wouldn't, use an app like this in the first place.
The research pointed to something the client hadn't fully considered: users didn't want to replace the physical shopping experience. People valued seeing products in person, touching them, testing them, measuring them, and letting the store itself inspire their next purchase. Combined with a key insight drawn from social listening: that people often go to Homecenter not because they need something specific, but to let the store tell them what they need, it became clear that a standard e-commerce app would miss the point entirely.
Reframing the Product Around In-Store Behavior
Based on those findings, we concluded the app shouldn't function as a simple online store, but as a complement to the in-store experience. It still had to support online purchases, but its core value was as a companion tool for the physical visit: letting users scan barcodes to see product details while physically testing the item in the store, then completing a single purchase through the app and having everything delivered home.
To validate this direction, I ran guerrilla testing directly in-store, talking to real shoppers mid-purchase about what they loved about the experience and what they'd actually want from an app. That grounded, on-the-floor research is what turned a generic e-commerce request into a product strategy built around how people genuinely shop, not how a typical retail app assumes they do.