2019-2021
When I joined Electrolux Group the work to be done was to deprecate two mobile companion apps. One had been built in-house with limited support from the hardware design team, the other had been built by an external partner. The idea was to replace these apps with a single, global app that would be published in two brands: Electrolux & AEG. Both of the connected appliance ranges that the apps were companion to were in the Wellbeing product line: a range of air purifiers and a range of robot vacuum cleaners.
There were so many things we needed to create from scratch, it felt like there were legacy design elements everywhere but very little that we could usefully use.
We had to create digital-friendly iconography in the correct sizes and line weights as, in Electrolux Group, icons had, up to this point only been for printed graphics and marketing material. This effort was later scaled up into an exhaustive iconography re-design (led by the group design lead for graphic design, Alissia Melka-Teichroew, together with Rob Bartlett) for the Electrolux Group iconography for both digital and printed graphics.
There was no established illustration design style for us to use, only basic technical illustrations for the printed manuals that we had to pull from pdfs, along with some exploratory packaging concepts. So we worked with CC Projects to create refined technical illustrations with consistent line weight, angle, and styling as well as a handful of empty state branded animations. We later moved this effort in-house.
The brand guidelines for digital were out-of-date and almost entirely from a marketing perspective. We needed to imagine what our historic brands could look like outside of a marketing campaign, packaging, appliance interface or physical environment and to do so in a scaleable way - so we could publish the app in two brands, not rebuild for each. It was thanks to our super talented designer Tobias Lundgren that we were able to produce designs that felt intrinsically on-brand while respecting native platform considerations.
We tested all of our UX as often as possible, sometimes in the dedicated usability testing facilities that were used by the hardware design teams but more often remotely with online respondents. In 2021 alone we ran over 50 usability test sessions. Our dedicated UX researchers - first Julia Tatkowska (consultant), then Vaida Pakulyte - built a remote testing, recruiting, recording and synthesising tool chain to enable this.
For UX writing we moved from working with a technical writer to a dedicated UX writer - first Marie Hellander (consultant), then Max Hammarstedt. With only budget for 50% for this role, we shared Max with the Accenture teams working on the apps for major appliances in the Taste and Care product lines. Marie and Max built on the established use of Phrase to manage localisation, working tirelessly to improve the quality of translations. We consulted with UX writer Elaine Short to establish our glossary and style guide with Max building and expanding on her work to really define our brand neutral writing style. It is thanks to Max’s talent and dedication that we were able to demonstrate the impact of content design, paving the way for us to grow the UX writing discipline in the group.
Building digital experiences in a 100 year old hardware company certainly had its challenges. What was memorable about the work that we did was that we were able to lean into the details and design user experiences that we were super proud of, despite the significant technical considerations that came from the hardware. What’s more, we did it during COVID and… we had a lot of fun! All of this was enabled by our product VP, Daniel Wentz, who was consistently supportive and appreciative of our efforts as well as our senior sponsor, Ola Nilsson. We were also lucky to have excellent tech leadership from Andreas Larsson and highly collaborative product leadership from Karmela Cortez and Martin Kwarnmark.