Assign Hub
Redesigning who-owns-what: the system that assigns people to product hierarchies.
Assign Hub governs ownership across merchandising — who is responsible for each category, product group, and assortment. The legacy application, built over 20 years ago, buried these critical decisions under outdated patterns and click-heavy workflows. I led the end-to-end redesign: wireframes through high-fidelity prototypes.
Owned the end-to-end design process — wireframes through final UI and interactive prototyping. Used AI-accelerated exploration (Figma Make) to iterate rapidly. Made strategic feature-prioritization decisions, removing friction-heavy elements and enhancing core assignment workflows. Partnered with product and engineering to ensure feasibility and implementation readiness.
Internal Lowe's project — details available in interview settings.
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Sanitized recreation of the redesigned flow — brand, names and data are illustrative.
open case_file: assign hub — design decisionsclose case_file: assign hub — design decisions
01A workspace, not a dashboard
I made the landing page a place to do the work, not a report to read. People sit on the left, the product hierarchy on the right, and a short guided flow turns a selection into an assignment.
- Built for the main job. Assign one or more people to one or more parts of the hierarchy, with clear primary and backup roles and a warning before anything gets overwritten.
- Access matches responsibility. Anyone can look up who owns what, but people can only change assignments for the areas they're responsible for.
- Reporting lines come from a trusted source. The old tool relied on hand-built manager mappings; the new one pulls the chain of ownership from official people data.
- Room to grow. Vendors and locations are optional steps, so the first release could focus on the core job while the rest follows.
- No disruption during the switch. Changes stay in sync with the old system, so teams that still depend on it keep working while everyone moves over.
The result: fast, controlled assignments today, with room to grow as the rest of the old tool's features move over.
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02Change only what needs changing
The details drawer opens for one person. It lets someone find that person's items, pick just the ones that need to move, and hand them to someone else, without touching the rest of the hierarchy.
- One item or many. Checkboxes and Select All handle both a single fix and a bulk move.
- Find things fast. Search, filters and a View By switch narrow things down from broad categories to specific items.
- No accidental changes. Save stays off until both the items and a new owner are chosen, and replacing existing owners needs an explicit confirmation.
- Permissions built in. Some people can only view; others can reassign.
- Nothing gets orphaned. If someone leaves, their items move to their manager and get flagged, so ownership never quietly disappears.
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03Answering "who owns this?"
The Assigned Users drawer opens from a single item and shows everyone responsible for it. The goal was to make ownership and coverage visible at a glance, so nobody has to piece the org chart together by hand.
- The full chain, in one place. Each item shows its assigned owner plus the management chain above them.
- Teams kept apart. Different teams own items in different ways, so each gets its own section instead of one blended list.
- Find people by role. Owners are grouped by role, so users can find the right contact even if they don't know the name.
- Primary and backup, side by side. If someone is out or leaves, the backup and manager fallback keep responsibility visible.
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04A deliberate last look
The final step summarizes everything before anyone presses Assign: the person, the items, and any vendors or locations. One click here can change ownership of many records at once, so it should feel like a reviewable transaction, not a quick save.
- See the impact before it happens. Counts and the exact selections are shown up front, and a warning appears if the change would replace someone's existing ownership.
- Optional means optional. Vendors and locations only appear in the summary when they were actually chosen, next to the core person-to-product assignment.
- Clear rules for overlaps. When different kinds of assignment cover the same item, a simple precedence rule decides, so there's never a conflict to untangle later.
- Built for big selections. Location picks can span many pages and groups; the review confirms the full set before saving.
In short, this screen is the safety check and paper trail for a potentially large ownership change.
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05What I'd change next
If I took another pass, these are the three changes I'd make first.
- Always show what's selected. Picking one high-level category can quietly pull in everything beneath it. A running summary next to the main button (how many people, groups and items) would show exactly what's about to be assigned.
- Separate browsing from selecting. The nested lists do two jobs: open to explore, and check to assign. Those controls should look clearly different and behave the same at every level, so opening something never selects it, and selecting never opens it. That would remove one of the biggest potential sources of mistakes.
- View first, edit on purpose. The details drawer mixes looking and editing. I'd open it read-only, for checking and filtering someone's assignments, and add a clear Reassign button that switches on the checkboxes and save controls. People who only want to look wouldn't face editing tools they don't need.
