Lowe’s Corporate Domain Redesign & Design System
Challenge:
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Shape visual language of Lowe’s corporate brand. Make it in line with updated consumer brand, but also differenciate, targeting coporate audiences.
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Unify five different Lowe’s websites under the umbrella of cohesive branding and user expericence of Lowe’s corporate domain.
- Improve experience for Lowe’s corporate audiences, by addressing existing usability issues.
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Streamline workflow for Lowe’s digital teams. Make frequent updates and addition of new sections easy and mistake-proof.
Solution:
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Create a single “source of truth” for visual and interactive styles in a comprehensive and flexible design system, that will suffice all Lowe’s teams and accomodate all types of content, current and future.
- Provide Lowe’s teams with user-friendly CMS and online modular library for easy access to site’s components, rules and guidelines.
Process:
Multiple in-person workshops were conducted at Lowe’s headquarters in North Carolina. The topics included: branding, what we have an how to differenciate a corporate brand, visual language, photography. Multiple rounds of interviews were conducted with key stakeholders from all involved teams to observe their workflow and understand their goals, needs and painpoints.
My role:
I led the design and oversaw development of the design system. At the beginning of the project I collaborated with a remote, London based team of two: Lucey Harley, director of creative content, and Simon Gittings, the creative director of Investis Digital UK. Later on, in NY office, I worked with Anne Apuzzo, the digital strategist.
corporate.lowes.com ︎︎︎
Process Process Process Process Process
Content analysis of Lowe’s 5 sites.
Photography and layout workshops. Team was given color stickers to vote for photography styles and layout elements of the best competitive and other websites, selected by the team in advance.
Analysis of the consumer branding and existing websites. The team was given color stickers to vote for elements that they would like to keep, leave of explore. A short explanation was reqested along with a vote. The workshop helped us identify patterns that set a foundation for Lowe’s corporate distinctive visual language. 
Corporate vs. e-commerce domains key differentiators.
Concept visuals from initial presenation.
Online component library for Lowe’s teams.
Zeplin design system for developers.
The design system was successfully applied for design and launch of more 120 pages. Most of the pages were put together by a different design team. Lowe’s teams have added more than 30 pages since then and continue working on content updates and new launches every day.