Background
Identifying that accessibility has a large impact on the adoption of their digital products, team leads at Home Depot selected a group of UX designers to come through our Advanced Accessibility and Usability course. This was a strategic move aimed at upskilling their design team to craft more accessible, user-friendly internal software systems.
Ben Judy, UX and Product Design Lead of the DesignOps team at Home Depot, shared motivations for putting designers through the program:
“We design hundreds of software applications used by store associates, support personnel, and contractors for a category-leading retail business with more than 2.300 stores across North America. The user experience of this software has a direct impact on the 465,000 employees of the business, as well as downstream impacts on the customers we serve. If the software is hard to use or inaccessible to people with disabilities, our associates will not be effective in their jobs, our customers will be frustrated, and our business will lose money. If the software is easy to use for everyone, our business will be efficient and we can deliver on our promise to our customers.”
Seven designers, ranging from junior to senior roles across various parts of the UX design team, participated in the course.
Challenge
The primary challenge faced by the team is that many designers were aware of accessibility and usability principles and standards, but lacked formal training. Key motivations for participation were:
- Upskill designers to be able to craft more user-friendly internal software systems
- Produce higher-quality designs when it comes to accessibility standards
- Influence technology and product partners to provide better software UX
- Raise the level of awareness and skill with accessibility across the organization
- Support the efforts of existing accessibility advocates at Home Depot
Identifying these challenges allowed for the opportunity for designers from different teams across Home Depot to take this course in order to gain increased fluency across accessibility and usability standards.
Solution
To address these gaps, seven UX contributors across several Home Depot teams and varying levels of seniority enrolled in Designlab’s Advanced Accessibility and Usability course. Throughout the four-week course, participants honed their ability to approach design through an accessibility-first lens. The goals of the team intersected with the main learning objectives of the course, which are outlined below:
- Principles of accessible design: Gaining better holistic knowledge about designing with accessibility in mind to promote usability for all individuals.
- Tools for heuristic evaluation: Understanding how accessibility tools, like Heurio and Lighthouse, can be used to evaluate the usability of a website and improve accessibility more easily and seamlessly.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Working directly with developer tools created a more holistic understanding of the design process from other points of view.
- Accessibility advocacy: Being able to more confidently advocate for accessibility within their design teams and across the organization as a whole.
- Earlier adoption of accessibility: Considering accessibility principles and standards from the start of a design process, creating a design mindset that is more usability-focused as a whole.
These goals were largely accomplished, with strongly positive feedback from the team about their experience with the course.
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Results
“I think this is something that the entire team should be aware of. It’s great to have a few people educated on Accessibility, but ensuring everyone is learning the same material from the same source ensures alignment.”, stated Aric Nelson, a UX designer working with Home Depot on pricing and data visualization.
I think this is something that the entire team should be aware of. It’s great to have a few people educated on Accessibility, but ensuring everyone is learning the same material from the same source ensures alignment. — Aric Nelson, UX designer at Home Depot
Largely across the board, participants largely echoed this sentiment, finding value in the learning materials, and also noted that taking the course with other team members enhanced their experience overall.
Mentorship and Peer Interaction
A component of the Advanced Usability and Accessibility course is working with a mentor and meeting for weekly discussions with other course participants. Additionally, there was an added component for the Home Depot team in that several members of their organization took the program simultaneously.
While the participants from Home Depot were all from the same organization, some were on different teams or had varying levels of availability, meaning that students did not necessarily work through the curriculum collaboratively. However, there was still significant value in being part of the same cohort.
Karen Kohtz, a UX designer working on internal-facing assisted software, told us “I now know my peers much better and the networking was hugely beneficial. Some of my classmates and I have reached out across teams and are already collaborating on projects now that we know each other better.”
This statement was often echoed across other participating members. Additionally the value in the provided peer groups and mentor support through the course, finding them to be useful for asking questions and gaining deeper insights into the content.
Anna Aucompaugh, a UX designer working on the Enterprise UX team, shared “Our mentor Rafael Madrid, was spectacular! He was very thoughtful with his approach to our course meetings, and he was very friendly and supportive.”
Key Takeaways of the Team
The Home Depot team identified several key learnings where they found particular value after the course completion
The development of practical skills related to accessible design was a major area of improvement across the team. Hands-on projects reinforced theoretical information, and the inclusion of how to use specific tools for heuristic evaluation empowered the designers to make their learnings feel applicable to their real-world work.
Speaking about the practical skills exercise, Olivia Rainers, a UX Designer on the team, highlighted the positive impact of hands-on learning. “The exercise where we had to navigate a website blindfolded was a great way to understand how hard it is for someone with disabilities to navigate webpages to complete a task.”
The team also collectively made note of an improvement in feeling more confident in cross-team collaboration. By using developer tools in project work and looking at accessibility through the lens of engineers, participants cultivated a greater understanding of how to create a shared language about the concepts with teams that sit outside of UX.
I especially enjoyed learning about usability and accessibility advocacy. It was nice to learn strategies on how to engage with partners on the significance of these topics, how to pitch design recommendations, and how to incorporate product-oriented goals around these topics to hold partners accountable. — Amari El Amin, UX designer, Home Depot
When asked about what from the course is being integrated into their current workflow, Anna Aucompaugh again shared, “Definitely the developer tools. I didn’t know how to get under the hood like that before this course and it's been helping me a lot to better understand of how engineers look at UI and closing the gap between our different perspectives of our product.”
Participants also stated how the course helped them get more comfortable discussing the importance of accessibility to other team members. Amari El Amin, who works on the UX team doing both design and research, stated, “I especially enjoyed learning about usability and accessibility advocacy. In a large organization like The Home Depot, I’ve found it can be tricky to push forward the UX agenda. It was nice to learn strategies on how to engage with partners on the significance of these topics, how to pitch design recommendations, and how to incorporate product-oriented goals around these topics to hold partners accountable.”
When asked about the results of the student’s time in Advanced Usability and Accessibility, the response was that the course was considered a success.
Ben Judy, the DesignOps lead who initially advocated for the training, summed up the team’s experience. “The students had many takeaways and learned important concepts they can put to use. I am requesting [they] present a summary of what they learned and share it with their peers and leaders.”
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