I began the Define phase with the 5 Whys technique to quickly uncover the root cause of users frustrations, ensuring our problem definition addressed the underlying issues, not just the symptoms. This helped focus our problem statement on the key barriers in the current automotive shopping experience.

I developed a persona to humanize our research findings and keep the team aligned on a clear target user. This tool guided decision-making throughout the Define phase and into Develop.

Once our core user was defined I mapped the user’s existing experience to visualize pain points, friction, and opportunities. This made it easier to pinpoint where the most impact could be made and where I should focus as we move into the next phase.

I then created an empathy map based off of the insights from our persona and his current-state journey on Lowes.com. I reviewed his actions, pain points, and emotional responses at each phase of the journey, then distilled them into what Dusty says, thinks, does, and feels. This process allowed us to capture his real frustrations, behaviors, and needs, helping identify key opportunities to improve his shopping experience.

We synthesized all research into a clear, actionable problem statement, setting the stage for ideation in the Develop phase. This ensured that any concepts directly addressed the core challenge.

Our team synthesized research findings, behavioral data, and business constraints to clarify the core problem: customers lacked confidence and efficiency when shopping for vehicle-specific parts. To address both immediate compatibility friction and long-term retention opportunities, we aligned on designing two complementary features: an Automotive Parts Finder to streamline accurate part discovery at the point of purchase, and a persistent My Garage hub to save vehicles, personalize the shopping experience, and drive repeat engagement within the automotive category.

​

My next step was to map simple, end-to-end task flows for each feature to align on scope, identify edge cases, and ensure a frictionless user journey before moving into wireframing. Establishing these foundational flows allowed us to validate assumptions early and create a clear blueprint for design and engineering execution.

After aligning on the core task flows, I translated those linear paths into comprehensive user flows that mapped real-world decision points, edge cases, and system states. This allowed us to account for alternate entry points, error handling, cross-navigation between features, and downstream impacts on conversion—ensuring the experience was resilient, scalable, and aligned to measurable business outcomes.

I translated the validated user flows into low-fidelity wireframes to quickly operationalize structure, hierarchy, and interaction patterns without getting distracted by visual polish. Working in low fidelity allowed us to pressure-test layout decisions, content prioritization, and functional logic early, iterate rapidly based on feedback, and align stakeholders on core experience architecture before investing time in high-fidelity UI and design systems.

After validation testing, for desktop the embedded dropdown experience was preferred. Based on my secondary research and the insights from testing I made updates to the designs and then handed it off to our dev team. Currently if you go to Lowes.com and search “Oil Filters” you can see phase 1 (without My Garage) of this experience live on the site.