Home Connections Tool
The tool had to work the same way across dozens of providers and hundreds of stores
Best Buy Home Connections: I led a two-person design team from an inherited strategy to rollout in stores.
From a store concept to a guided tool
Home Connections was the digital tool that associates and customers used together in Best Buy’s Connected Home store sections.
The store concept came first
The CX Strategist’s six-phase journey framework identified where TV buyers needed help. The software was designed after the store environment had been defined.
The main challenge: consistency
The shared-screen model, in which an associate and a customer use the same view, came from the CX strategy before my team joined. Our work was to make that concept work consistently across dozens of providers, plans, and promotions in hundreds of stores, without a special case for every configuration.
The interaction model is still in use
Best Buy’s 2026 Home Connections flow has a new visual design, but it still uses the same guided, step-by-step logic as the 2013 design, now as a six-step wizard.
Strategic context
In 2013, Home Connections was part of CEO Hubert Joly’s Renew Blue transformation, which aimed to reposition Best Buy from an electronics retailer to a trusted advisor for the connected home.
Strategic priority: the company identified internet, TV, and home connectivity as an important growth category. Customers who needed help choosing an internet provider were customers Best Buy could serve better than online retailers could.
Scale: by the end of 2014, Best Buy had opened dedicated Connected Home sections in 400 of its 1,050 stores. Home Connections was the digital tool used in those sections.
Problem
As Manager, CX Design, I took over the Home Connections project while it was already under way. I inherited the CX Strategist’s work, which included a CX strategy and a shared-screen concept, but there was no design work and no clear path to delivery. Requirements were still changing, and stakeholders in merchandising, services, digital, and operations had competing priorities.
The project was not new, but the earlier work was strategic rather than design work. A CX Strategist had mapped the customer journey for a TV buyer across six phases (Discover, Learn, Engage, Transact, Serve, Grow), defined the in-store zones, and chosen the shared screen as the model: one digital interface that associates and customers would use together.
There were no wireframes or prototypes. My team created them.
My role
I managed two UX designers who produced the design work, from early wireframes through final high-fidelity prototypes. With my manager, I staffed the project with one designer full time and a second as needed in each phase.
I was responsible for design direction, stakeholder alignment, and the quality of what we delivered. My team turned the CX Strategist’s journey framework into wireframes. The UX Research team then tested our early concepts in stores in November 2012 with in-market customers and provided a summary of the findings, which we incorporated into the design. The findings were specific: the app needed more educational content, the progress indicators were unclear, and the BBY Multipack bundle concept tested well.
Impact
The result was a production-ready experience that worked consistently across hundreds of stores, used by associates with different levels of training, in different store layouts, and with different customer needs.
The tool launched on time as part of the Connected Home rollout across hundreds of stores. At that scale, any inconsistency in the design would have been visible immediately.
For context: Best Buy’s NPS improved during this period, and leadership cited the store experience as a factor. These are company results, and I do not attribute them to this tool.
The current Home Connections guided wizard on bestbuy.com is based on the same interaction model.
Key learnings
When I take over a project that is already under way, my first task is to decide what to keep, what to fix, and what to drop, before redesigning anything. Designing for hundreds of associates with different training and store layouts also meant choosing the clearest option in every decision.
Testimonials
“Alex is a rare breed of manager. He is involved and engaged in the projects of his team, providing feedback and encouraging dialogue without micromanaging. He is great at bringing the team together to evaluate in-progress work, brainstorming ideas, and facilitating creative thought processes in such a way that ensures all edges of a project are accounted for and the best solution is arrived at. He easily stepped beyond the role of simply ‘manager’ and into the role of mentor.”
Larissa Lowthorp, Information Architect“Alex has a brilliant mind. He has a keen business sense and a drive to enhance sales and make a site more profitable. He is very skilled in making strategic architectural decisions, using best practices and at the same time always thinking of the overall big picture of a project, end goals and keeping in line with what’s best for the customer. I feel very fortunate that Alex is my superior and Lead. Alex makes a great leader and is all around great to work with!”
Maria Berte, Information Architect