Creating The Home Depot University Experience
Unique and engaging employment branding, messaging, and tools for college students.
The Challenge
The internal partners wanted to create a segmented experience for college/university students. Their goals were to showcase internships, integrate social media channels, promote campus events, and highlight leadership programs. We focused messaging on aspirations, values, diversity, and scope of work. We also added an event calendar and a feedback form to create a communication channel for the students.
Internal Team
➕ College Recruiters
Qualitative Research
Discover: As part of the discovery and information architecture process, I conducted a series of focus groups to establish priorities, user personas, goals, and expectations. Validate: During initial design phase, we also conducted usability and messaging research with the same groups and iterated based on feedback.
Information Architecture
Based on the stakeholder meetings and focus groups we established the following top level priorities and information architecture:
✅ Campus event calendar
✅ Diversity and impact focus
✅ Open positions by category to coincide with degree programs
✅ Social media messaging integration
✅ MBA focused messaging for leadership roles Millennial testimonials
Additional Requirements
Based on the stakeholder meetings and focus groups we established the following top level priorities and information architecture:
✅ Component UI – Easily add, remove, update sections
✅ API integration – for including job data by category
✅ JSON file – for updating events
✅ Journalistic style photography
✅ Interview style video
✅ University specific color palette, icons, etc
Content Development, Wireframe, Prototype, High Fidelity
Next I created the wireframes and prototypes and we met first with the internal partners to review, then we distributed to previous focus group attendees with a feedback survey. Feedback at this stage in the process was much easier and more efficient to integrate into the overall design.
Photography and Video
I was also tasked with creating new targeted assets for the page. We identified locations around the corporate headquarters and culture that would appeal to new or recent college grads. I conducted location scouting, casting, shot lists, crew, and principal photography.
Visual Elements
After the page was rolled out, the team created an exclusive 5 city event/campaign called "The Orange Experience". I managed creative brief, production, and user experience integration. Since we planned ahead, we were able to easily add the new copy, design, photography, and video and roll it out quickly.
