The Ask
Digital Product Design • IOT Integration
Client • JennAir
The family of Whirlpool products is intentionally designed to feel familiar. They are the faces of one collective company vision. ANML was brought onboard as a design consultant specifically to emphasize the premium feel of JennAir appliances into the digital product as well. We focused on surfacing only the truly key functions of the cooking experience, and minimizing user confusion wherever possible.
The User
The chef that lives for the flair, with a knack for drama. The JennAir digital product experience speaks to those drawn to the luxurious. The dramatic visuals set the stage for the appliance to shine. Their oven’s something to show off, so they’ll do just that — gourmet, or not at all.
My Role
I entered this project toward the tail end of production. I was asked to expand and document the design language, and apply the recently created design language for two major sections of the product: Settings, and My Creations. Once complete, I would go on to create a high fidelity working prototype / motion study for the JennAir development team.
Home Feed Content
Up to ten articles at a time would appear on a rotation. Users also have access to cooking cooking controls, and My Appliances features a status indicator on a running appliance. This would be helpful if what you're cooking is burning, for example.
Assisted Cooking
Assisted cooking takes the hard work part out of the cooking process. I provided prototyping and motion studies for developers to reference as they built the product. Below is example of a work in progress cooking flow.
This prototype was an exercise in testing the digital product alongside home appliance integration. Therefore, some placeholder photography was used.
Our chef can review oven settings in a summary screen before they start the oven. Once the process has started, they can check on the timer, monitor the with a temperature gauge, or simply toggle the oven light remotely.
To conclude the cooking process, they can leave a comment to JennAir on the assisted cooking result, with options contextual to what they've finished cooking.
My Creations
My Creations is a featured tab in the primary navigation that allowed JennAir appliance owners to create custom cooking specifications for recipes with a personal touch. I was tasked with expanding the design style wherever needed for new text styles, modules, and components, along with a UI kit as part of the deliverable.
Select a Cooking Mode
Set the temperature
Set the timer
Want additional steps?
The cooking process
Settings
Users have control of account settings like adding and editing guest access to appliances and locations, integrating smart home devices, and editing personal information.
Outcome
Not everything is a success story
Unfortunately, ANML was not servicing development for this phase of the product. This meant we weren’t involved in a meaningful way after the handoff for development, and the ANML team as a whole was pretty disappointed. Many changes were made to a well tested user experience, which we believe ultimately caused it to fall flat. It became the design we never got to see.
When we handed it off to JennAir, something went wrong…
Functions of the home appliances like the cooktops and ovens continue to misalign with expected behaviors, and user research-validated decisions for viewports and interactions were ignored for some reason. I don’t sugarcoat feedback. If I were to draw a diagram of the product MVP combining user / business / design goals, we would see that user concerns are largely set aside in favor of business goals. The app today is an MVP, so still a work in progress, but over time we hope to see better communication and collaboration move us closer to solving for user’s needs.
I show this project despite the end result because I have high standards even for MVP’s, and I learned valuable lessons from the unusual process. It’s my belief that in general, the design team and product managers need to be deeply integrated in the process of development to clear confusion, and ensure design quality is maintained, as well as to refine and retool our work based on any developer team feedback. Too much of one side fares well for no one — and it hurts the end user the most. What can a company ask from their consumers, if not earned trust?
Project Status
• Shipped
