DISCOVERING THE ROLE OF LIGHT IN EVERYDAY LIVES

A leading smart lighting company asked us to help them gain a deeper understanding of their customers' daily needs and living habits. Using these insights, we enhanced their app to make it more relevant to a broader, mainstream audience and tested UX concepts to ensure optimal user experience.

The Challenge

We set out to answer key questions: What role does light play in people’s daily lives? What do they value most about their lighting setups? How do they organize their homes and lighting? And how can we improve the app experience to meet those needs?

The prototype was tested in 4 different markets

Vision

To better understand how daily routines differ across cultures and living conditions, we explored how users approach lighting from both health and safety perspectives. This allowed us to identify cultural nuances in how people think about lighting in their homes, especially how they structure lighting around different rooms. These insights led to a complete pivot in the app’s concept—from being focused on color customization to being organized around living spaces.

Armed with these insights, we kicked off the design process, developing prototypes that were validated through multiple rounds of international testing.

Different use cases

Solution

The insights gathered from comprehensive user research in the US, China, and Germany were integrated into design sprints. After three rounds of testing, the result was an app fully tailored to user needs and better aligned with how people mentally organize their lighting.

Our findings & concepts shaped the final design of the app.

The improvements in the app design were recognized by publications like The Verge, which noted significant enhancements in the app’s usability and features. This was also reflected in higher user ratings on both Google and Apple app stores, signaling that the app now better serves the everyday needs of a broad audience.