The living daylights
Lightening the mood for commercial spaces
Client
Services
Product Design and Development
Design Research
iOS and Android Development and Web Applications
Engineering Management
IoT and Bluetooth API design
Product Launch
Smart lighting systems are already being used to control the ambience in people’s homes-what if you could do something similar with commercial lighting to help improve human health and performance? This was the idea behind award-winning lighting company Finelite’s revolutionary new system for hospitals, schools and office spaces. They had a basic app to help program the system, but they wanted something much richer and more complex. They needed a partner who could deliver the right advanced features and functionality in an app that looked as good as it performed.
Enter Airro. We partnered with Finelite to design and develop a mobile app for controlling the world’s first programmable lighting system for commercial spaces. With its easy-to-use interface and enhanced customization tools, the Finelite FineTUNE app puts commercial users in control of their lighting needs to facilitate more natural, comfortable and healing environments.
Simulated sunlight
Studies show that light levels and color can have profound impacts on the way people learn, work and even heal. Designed with user input and Finelite's lighting experts, the FineTUNE® Tailored Control System (TCS) is a state-of-the-art lighting solution that helps users get closer to the experience of sunlight to help boost mood and well-being.
Of colors and Kelvins
To design an intuitive app for a complex system that mimics sunlight, Airro had to quickly get schooled in the space. Design research and stakeholder interviews helped us better understand the FineTUNE system’s illuminating possibilities around color, temperature and brightness to boost mood (Blue, for example, promotes wakefulness, while orange at around 2,500 Kelvin is a sweet spot for calming).
UX for U
Quick iterations of the app’s basic design interface and functionality helped us define high level user flows and prioritize functionality requirements early on.
From discovery to demo
Getting a high-fidelity demo in front of the client as quickly as possible is a key priority for all Airro projects. This helps us validate hypotheses and solve problems sooner to ultimately deliver a better product. Our first demo for the app was designed with the following two criteria in mind: One, focus on the most complex part of the design first (in this case, it was building the daylight scheduling UX) . And two, prove out the assumptions about the core technologies to make sure they’re viable down the road.
Sometimes, you gotta change your tune
During testing, Airro discovered users were struggling with the app’s schedule creation feature. We introduced a schedule graph to better visualize the task, simplified the UX and eliminated some of the more detailed scheduling features. This dramatically simplified the code and led to more successful user testing sessions.
Bluetooth blues
After launching the iOS version of the app, Airro turned its attention to Android. Bluetooth is notoriously hard to do in Android because there and so many different manufacturers and therefore more potential for bugs. Since the Finelite app was dependent on Bluetooth to speak to the hardware, there was little tolerance for error in our process. Even with prototyping, the Airro team had to finesse the Bluetooth code several times to get the kinks out.
Brains and beauty
With its pleasing design and friendly, intuitive interface, the mobile app allows you to name spaces, program hours of operation and create tunable white transition schedules and customize system settings for each space.
