From Onboarding to Ownership — Case Study Preview

Lead capture flow across four screens: home dashboard, new lead entry, category selection, and appointment scheduling

Before the Full Story

Arriving at a solution

The Problem

Madison needed to learn a complex, multi-stakeholder system she'd never touched while designing a third version of an experience that already had two established siblings — and as one of the first designers in a new hybrid design/PM track, her job was to own it end-to-end, not just design it.

The Decision

Teach the pattern, not the rule — walk her through the existing tools side-by-side, co-attend her first stakeholder conversations then deliberately step back, review every flow against the established versions together, then hand over the remaining decisions entirely.

Where Things Stand

Designs are complete and reviewed with partners; in-store testing is next, with 10 participants across 2 stores. Pilot results aren't in yet, so the numbers below reflect scope, not impact.

Impact

A year in, Madison operates as a genuine design-PM hybrid — owning stakeholder relationships and design decisions end-to-end, with me reviewing rather than directing.

What I'd Carry Forward

The hardest part wasn't maintaining design consistency — it was building judgment instead of just handing over tasks, and trusting Madison to work through hard calls herself rather than stepping in. A year in, she doesn't need me to tell the difference anymore — she has the tools and the resourcefulness to figure it out on her own.

Context

A new designer, a new challenge, at the same time

Madison joined my team in June 2025 as an entry-level Associate Product Designer, coming out of Lowe's Launchpad program — a career-training track with a path to hire for recent college graduates. Over her first year, she worked across a range of projects that built her familiarity with our UX design process, our design system, and the cross-organizational relationships every project here depends on. In June 2026, Lowe's launched Lead Capture for In-Home Sales Specialists (IHSS) and PROviders (third-party professional installers) on their own dedicated tools — and the capability proved itself almost immediately, generating $1.3M in revenue from the PROvider app and $2.2M from IHSS YTD. We moved quickly to build on that momentum: an opportunity opened up soon after to extend the same experience to in-store associates and specialists, who needed their own version built for the sales floor, combining lead capture and appointment scheduling in one place. I saw it as the right project to grow Madison into, not just hand her.

The Challenge

Two things had to grow at once

This wasn't a simple onboarding. Madison needed to learn a genuinely complex, multi-stakeholder system she'd never touched, while designing a third version of an experience that already had two established siblings — meaning every decision she made needed to hold up next to patterns she didn't create. At the same time, Lowe's had just introduced a new hybrid designer/PM track, and Madison was one of the first designers into it — meaning her job wasn't only to design the thing, it was to own it end-to-end: stakeholder relationships, business alignment, and delivery, not just Figma files.

Coaching Approach

Teach the pattern, not the rule

Rather than handing Madison a style guide, I walked her through the existing IHSS and PROvider tools side-by-side before she designed anything — not so she'd copy them, but so she could see why each pattern existed, and start recognizing the difference between an established convention and an incidental one-off choice. That distinction became the foundation for every design call she'd go on to make independently.

Coaching Decisions

Grow the person and the product at the same time.

Co-attending, then stepping back Side-by-side reviews Handing over the driver's seat

01 / 03

Co-attending, then stepping back

Because Madison's hybrid role meant she owned stakeholder relationships too, I didn't delegate the introductions — I co-attended her first conversations with store teams and business stakeholders so she could build trust with me still visibly in the room, then deliberately stepped back once those relationships were hers to carry. I stayed present just long enough for the relationship to become hers, not mine.

02 / 03

Side-by-side reviews, not a rulebook

Every major flow got reviewed against the IHSS and PROvider versions together, not in isolation — training Madison to spot when a difference was an intentional pattern worth preserving versus an accidental inconsistency worth fixing, so she could make that call herself going forward. Just as important, I helped Madison build a habit of direct design collaboration with her peer Oliver French, who was building the IHSS and PROvider solutions in parallel — so her designs and workflow stayed aligned with his as both moved forward, not just reconciled after the fact.

$User flow diagram for measure with customer lookup, spanning search, category selection, scheduling, and lead submission$

Scroll horizontally to explore, or click to expand into a full-resolution, pannable view

The goal was for Madison to stop needing me to tell the difference.

03 / 03

Handing over the driver's seat

Once the fundamentals were solid, I moved from making decisions to reviewing them — leaving the remaining design calls and the stakeholder work needed to reach pilot-ready in Madison's hands, staying available, not in charge.

My job shifted from decision-maker to safety net.

Outcome

Where things stand

Pilot Participants

Stores in Pilot

6 mo

On This Project

Pilot results aren't in yet — in-store testing hasn't started, so the numbers above reflect scope, not impact. Designs are complete and reviewed with partners; in-store testing is next. Ahead of pilot launch, I've coached Madison directly on in-store user testing — how to structure a session, what to watch for, how to stay neutral — and connected her with our research team, so she has their support on test-plan writing and testing methodology suited to the results we're actually trying to learn from this pilot. Madison is now operating as a genuine design-PM hybrid on this project — owning stakeholder relationships and design decisions end-to-end, with me reviewing rather than directing.

Reflection

Growing a person and a product don't happen on the same clock

The hardest part of this wasn't the design consistency work — it was building Madison's judgment, not just her output: teaching her to tell a pattern from a one-off, to hold her own in a stakeholder conversation, to know which calls were hers to make without checking first. That only happens by handing over real decisions, not staged ones, and trusting her to work through the hard ones herself. The product was never really the hard part here. Making Madison resourceful enough not to need me was.