I'm Joshua,

I am a UX/UI Designer who loves the feeling of freedom that comes from great interaction design. I enjoy the problem solving process and embrace the challenges each design brings.

585·261·1897  |  HutchinsJoshua@gmail.com
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Sengled Pulse UI

Overview

Sengled is a Shanghai based company and one of the largest light bulb manufacturers in the world. Their sales have historically been business to business, but they began their movement into the consumer market with the Pulse.

The Sengled Pulse is a light and a speaker in one bulb. To control the brightness and volume of the speaker they developed a mobile app.

Division of light and sound

The Pulse combined light and speaker into one bulb but the tasks within the app. are seperated as much as possible. The seperation is both a hierarchical and visual division.

Hierarchically the adjustment control, power button, and settings button for the pulse light were all available when 'Light' was selected and vice versa for the speaker controls. This focuses the task to adjusting lights without forcing the user to filter through speaker options.

Visually the adjustment controls for the light and speaker used different colors and different elements. Light used a yellow color in a continuous circle. Volume used a blue color with a traditional stacked box element.

Correcting for shortcomings

The communication between bulb and app through bluetooth was not fast enough to provide an optimal user experience. The adjustments in light lagged and had clear jumps in the real world. The volume lagged as well adjusting after changes in the app. are made.

To mitigate the lag in communication, step controls were made prominent within the visualizers. Other controls are available to the user, but the step controls are the only explicit controls because they provide the best experience.

Mute / Off button

The speaker 'mute' and light 'off' buttons were added to the feature list of the app. Their inclusion is for two reasons. First, a survey confirmed that a mute button is an expected feature by users. Secondly, the alternative to a mute button required turning the volume to zero and then returning to the original volume. This workflow relies on the user, and creates a poor user experience.

EQ visualization

The equilization (EQ) presets provided in the app were to be named only. EQ visualizations were an added feature to increase visibility into the preset function. Labels alone did not offer enough information for the user to make an informed decision.

By adding the EQ visualization users are empowered to choose presets that suit their preference and not rely on musical genres.

Icons

These are a few of the custom icons created for the Sengled Pulse App.

The light and speaker icons are used for adjustments and mute / off buttons. The instruments are used for the speaker EQ presets.

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My design philosophy

'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'     - Maya Angelou

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