A design, then silence
Before Design Hub, kitchen designs were shown once, in person — then emailed as a static image inside a quote packet. Once the customer left, there was no way to revisit the design or give feedback. For a purchase as considered as a kitchen remodel, that's exactly the window where momentum is lost.
Lowe's Project Dashboard is where customers and designers plan a project together — product preferences, design inspiration, and progress all live there, and it's the one shared space both sides return to. Critically, it's also the customer's main way to stay engaged with their project in the gaps between appointments and final completion. It tracked all of that already, but had no space for the design itself. The business identified the gap; I owned the solution, partnering with the LMS team and the team behind MRV Projects (Lowe's internal project management tool) to build it a home across all three surfaces.
Losing momentum after the appointment
- No space to stay engaged. A static email attachment gave customers nothing to return to or ask questions about.
- No formal way to manage design assets. Store visits during LMS research showed designers relied on an ad hoc process.
- A fragmented project experience. Customers had a dashboard for their project, but design — the most emotional part of a remodel — lived outside it.
Building on what LMS already taught us
Rather than a dedicated study, Design Hub leaned on LMS store-visit research plus stakeholder input — which had already surfaced that designers managed assets informally, with no control over what customers saw. Design Hub needed to solve both sides: formal asset management for designers, and a real review space for customers.
A space customers return to, not a one-time reveal
Rather than one standalone tool, Design Hub is embedded directly into the three places people already work: the customer-facing Lowe's Project Dashboard, the associate-facing Workbench/LMS, and MRV Projects, Lowe's internal project management tool. Same designs, same comments, no separate login or re-entry.
A Share Online toggle on every design lets designers decide exactly what a customer can see — draft work stays private until a designer is ready, and nothing reaches the customer view by accident.
Customers comment directly on a specific design image, and the designer replies in the same thread. It's the difference between a customer emailing "can we change the drawers" into a void and having an actual, attached conversation the designer can act on.
Note: names and comments in this screen are placeholder/sample content, not a real customer interaction.
"Start New Design in 3D Cloud" launches directly into Lowe's third-party design tool, so new design work starts from the same space where it will later be reviewed.
Impact
The $27K sale followed directly from a customer's increased confidence after receiving their design in Design Hub — early signal that a space to revisit and engage, not a one-time reveal, drives real purchase decisions. Of associates and designers exposed to Design Hub so far, 94% report it's beneficial to how they work.
What I'd carry forward
Given Lowe's pace, we leaned on existing LMS research rather than running a dedicated study. A focused round on curation — how much feels helpful vs. restrictive — would have de-risked assumptions earlier. A tradeoff I'd make again for a fast pilot, with a clearer plan to validate it post-launch.