Solving a customer pain-point and laying the groundwork for an app store hit

Bunnings Product Finder began as a pilot project to develop an app for Bunnings, Australia’s largest and most iconic hardware retailer.

The goal was to solve a familiar problem for customers: finding a specific product in stores famous for their enormous scale and thousands of items.

Working as a producer at Millipede, Keith collaborated with AKQA’s UX team across a series of agile development sprints. Each sprint focused on solving a specific user challenge, steadily shaping what began as an internal proof of concept into a functional product.

Using Bunnings’ existing store data alongside mobile location services, the app could identify which store a customer was in and guide them directly to the correct aisle and location number for any product they searched for.

What started as an internal experiment quickly proved its value and was released publicly on the App Store, becoming a hit with customers.

The pilot ultimately formed the foundation of the modern Bunnings mobile app, where product finding remains central to the experience. A small detail from the original build also survives today: Keith’s hand-crafted loading animation, which is still visible in the app.