Case study #2
Defining the home appliance
CX of tomorrow
Interaction Design
Design Documentation
A long time ago a few talented co-workers of mine were set to define a new visual design direction for our clients product portfolio of home appliances. The goal was to transform the overall home appliance CX for the premium market.
Although, it is a big leap to move from a future-looking concept to market-ready design. Scaling the concept to a large portfolio of product categories and value classes while prevailing the “magic” of the original vision had become a challenge and the team, with me included, got brought back in to solve it.
Old approach
Maintain coherence within silos of product categories
We learned that the current UX approach often prioritise consistency within a given product category, not taking into consideration customers owning several appliances from the same brand. Also, the same design problems are being solved over and over again by different product teams.
To solve this challenge we pioneered an ecosystem approach, defining global interaction for a seamless user experience. All thoroughly documented in a Styleguide providing a single source of truth for the whole organisation.
Ecosystem approach
Establish coherence across product category ecosystem
Interaction
Design (UX)
Immersion
What was the process for tackling this design challenge?
Design
Refine
Making ourselves acquaintance with the product portfolio, already established design guidelines and UI components was inevitably our first step. Mapping out how each user goal is currently realized in the interface by different product teams and the original design vision followed thereafter. The user goals express what people want to achieve with their home appliances – agnostic of technical constraints and design solutions such as setting parameter values, filter, adding a program to favorites etc.
Based on the pattern inventory we were able to define standard patterns across multiple display clusters and technologies. These patterns served as best practises solutions for how a user achieves a goal.
Moreover, to communicate the foundational design across the organisation we documented all aspects of the design into one digital brand management platform serving as a holistic design framework for future expansion of the vision. Enabling internal teams to refer to the same guiding principles rather than working on isolated solutions.
Deliver
For a non-designer, what exactly is interaction patterns?
Interaction patterns are best practises solutions for how a user achieves a goal. They show reusable combination of components and templates that addresses common user objective with sequences and flows.
In our case the interaction patterns had to navigate a number of complexity layers for a coherent experience across appliances, taking under consideration a large variety of design display sizes and aspect rations, scalability to displays with limited touch capabilities, and different types of physical controls (start buttons, etc).
Got it! I bet it wasn’t a walk in the park, was it?
Definitely not. Navigating all the complexity layers to the side, aligning multiple product teams, key stakeholders and external consultancies was our main challenge. Not to override the work thats already been made, we established a transparent and collaborative environment by initiating workshops with all parties involved to find a common understanding and directions to move forward with.
Key stakeholder
“The end delivery was much more than the MVP. I am so amazed by the quality you have generated and your passion throughout the project has been really inspiring.”
Head of design