Background
In 2018 and 2019, a hardware engineering team worked on a replacement of Honeywell's TR70 wall module, a product designed in the 1980s with a fixed segment display and physical buttons that had single functions (bottom image).
Responsibilities
As a Principal Experience Designer, I occasionally need to step in to quickly redesign something that did not go through standard UX processes. In this case I had to completely redesign a solution that came from another Honeywell studio but did not meet the quality expectations of our Senior Director of Global Product Management.
Actions
With only a few weeks before manufacturing, I quickly established relationships with the engineers in Europe and argued that we could substantially revise the design in a way that would garner more customer excitement and business success. I pushed very hard on the team to advise me on constraints, critique my design direction, and embrace the opportunity to do something that exceeded business expectations.
Results
Working with severe constraints, I designed a new UI that took better advantage of the color touch screen display. While the locations of each UI element were still fixed in position and size due to limited processing power on the system's controller, the resulting display was reviewed enthusiastically by industry publications and led to 30% more sales than projected.
