Unifying the Bay Decontamination Workflow
Redesigned a fragmented decontamination workflow with the potential to deliver an estimated $4M in annual labor-saving opportunities while improving operational efficiency for MET associates.
Bay Decontamination is a labor-intensive process in which MET associates identify, remove, and process damaged merchandise across Home Depot stores. The existing workflow forced them to move between disconnected tools, interpret complex planograms, and make operational decisions with limited system guidance.
Problem Framing
Bay Decontamination was slowed by fragmented tools, unclear guidance, and limited visibility into effort—creating friction for associates and inefficiency at scale.
MET associates worked in active store aisles, where customer questions frequently interrupted their tasks. Returning to disconnected systems made it difficult to recover progress and continue confidently.
Decontamination also represented a significant portion of General Service labor, yet the organization had limited visibility into where time was being spent or why delays occurred.
The core problem was a fragmented workflow that required important operational decisions without clear, timely guidance.
Key Insight:
The biggest source of inefficiency was not the work itself, but waiting — caused by blocking system dependencies during decontamination.
The Workflow Was Breaking Down at Scale
Research revealed that the challenges extended beyond usability. The existing workflow created four systemic issues that affected associates, operational visibility, and business efficiency.
Fragmented Information
Critical information was spread across multiple systems, forcing associates to reconstruct context throughout the task.
Limited visibility into task-level effort
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A single Yes/No completion masked the true effort required.
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Labor models lacked the granularity needed to evaluate efficiency or delays.
High Cognitive Load During Execution
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Associates manually interpreted complex planograms with limited system guidance.
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Each interruption required them to rebuild context before continuing their task.
Labor inefficiency at scale
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~2,945 hours of inefficiency per week (Labor Engineering estimate)
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Equivalent to ~$4M in annual labor reallocation opportunity
The business needed more than a usability improvement—it needed a workflow that improved operational efficiency and reduced labor costs.
Understanding the Workflow
Before proposing solutions, I needed to understand how Bay Decontamination was actually performed—not just how the process was documented.
To uncover the root causes, I partnered with 20 MET associates, 9 MET supervisors, 1 freight associate, and 1 Night Operations Assistant Store Manager across Atlanta and New York stores.
Research Activities
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Field observations
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Contextual interviews
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Workflow mapping
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Stakeholder alignment
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Artifact and process review
The research revealed that Bay Decontamination rarely followed a clean, uninterrupted sequence. Customer questions, system switching, and individualized ways of working continuously reshaped the task.
Design Principles
The research uncovered recurring workflow challenges that extended beyond usability. These insights became four principles that guided every design decision.
Keep associates in flow
Associates constantly switched between multiple tools to gather the information needed to complete a single task.
Unify critical task information into one workflow so associates stay focused and complete work without losing momentum.
Make effort visible without friction
A single Yes/No completion step treated every bay as equal, masking differences in product volume, bay condition, and task complexity.
Capture task-level effort naturally within the workflow so the business can better understand labor needs without adding extra work for associates.
Design for approximation, not perfection
Complex bays could include multiple planograms spanning dozens of pages, making exact product placement difficult to interpret.
Provide clear visual guidance that helps associates identify an approximate location and validate placement quickly without reviewing an entire planogram.
Build once, scale across teams
MET, Store Operations, and Freight completed nearly identical decontamination activities through separate workflows and tools.
Create a reusable experience that supports shared needs across teams while allowing each workflow to retain its operational differences.
My Role & Contributions
Lead UX Designer
I led the project from discovery through validation, partnering with MET, Store Operations, Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders to redesign a fragmented Bay Decontamination workflow into a more unified and scalable experience.
What I owned
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Led field research, contextual interviews, and workflow mapping
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Synthesized findings into opportunity areas and design principles
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Facilitated alignment across MET, Store Operations, Product, and Engineering
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Designed and iterated the end-to-end workflow and prototypes
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Planned and conducted usability testing, translating findings into design recommendations
What I partnered on
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Operational requirements with MET and Store Operations
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Prioritization with Product
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Technical feasibility with Engineering
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Connected the design opportunity to labor-impact estimates provided by the business and Labor Engineering teams
From Insight to Solution
Guided by the design principles, I explored multiple workflow concepts and iterated through several rounds of usability testing. This design board captures the progression from early ideas to a validated workflow, ensuring each design decision was grounded in user feedback rather than assumptions.
Solution Overview
The redesign unified Bay Decontamination into a guided workflow that reduced context switching, supported real-world interruptions, and surfaced the right information at the moment associates needed it.
The Associate Experience After Redesign
With blocking dependencies removed and guidance embedded directly into the workflow, decontamination no longer requires associates to pause work, exit the task, or wait for secondary systems to load. The journey below reflects the validated happy path of the redesigned experience, where associates can move through decontamination continuously while capturing intent and resolving issues in-flow.
This journey represents the most common successful path observed during validation of the redesigned flow.
Validated Journey
To validate the redesign, I tested the complete workflow with associates performing Bay Decontamination in realistic store scenarios. The journey below illustrates the most common successful path observed during testing.
🙂 Start → 💪 Find Bay → 😊 Verify → 😀 Resolve → 😌 Complete
Validation
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92.3 UMUX-Lite
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Reduced context switching
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Associates resumed work without rebuilding context
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Workflow remained uninterrupted during customer interactions
Final Impact
Business Impact
Estimated $4M annual labor reallocation opportunity
Reduced idle time caused by waiting and context switching
Improved visibility into associate effort
Associate Impact
92.3 UMUX-Lite
Lower cognitive load
Better guidance during complex decontamination tasks
Associates stayed in flow despite interruptions
Operational Impact
Unified fragmented workflows into a scalable experience
Reusable framework across multiple operational teams
Reflection
This project changed how I think about enterprise UX. The biggest usability issues weren't caused by poor interfaces—they were symptoms of disconnected operational systems, invisible labor, and fragmented workflows. Solving the problem required understanding the entire ecosystem rather than optimizing individual screens.
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It also reinforced the importance of grounding design decisions in field research. Observing associates in their real work environment uncovered constraints—customer interruptions, physical movement, and context switching—that would have been difficult to identify through interviews alone. Those insights became the foundation of the redesign strategy.
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While the visual interface changed, the larger achievement was creating a workflow that aligned associate needs with business visibility, demonstrating how UX can improve both human experience and operational outcomes.
Note: Some visuals, terminology, and workflows have been simplified or abstracted to protect confidential product information while accurately representing the design process and outcomes.
