Switchless
A zero-to-one smart home command center that unifies five siloed sensors into one interface anyone can use.
TIMELINE
October 2024 – June 2025
ROLE
Product Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Kayley Vu
Warren Wu
Nicho Naugle
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Problem
Five sensors, five apps, five things to keep track of.
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Process
I mapped how the hardware and the app should talk, before either existed.
This is where my Cognitive Science background did the most work. I sat with the design team and mapped the end-to-end data flow between the physical sensors and the mobile interface: what the hub senses, what it sends, what the app shows, and how fast that loop has to close to feel real.
We matched the technical constraints to how people actually expect a home to respond, so feedback lands as real-time instead of laggy and confusing. Getting that mapping right early gave the rest of the design a reliable backbone to build on.
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Process
Turning if-this-then-that logic into something that reads like a sentence.
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Process
To make the app feel like one product instead of a stack of features, we built a shared set of reusable components and design tokens. We standardized the sensor iconography and the data-visualization cards so a humidity card and an air-quality card read the same way.
Whether you are scanning the dashboard or setting up an automation, the interface stays consistent and predictable, which is what lets a first-time user trust it.
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Reflection
Our first concepts leaned on glassmorphism, and they did not hold up. Over the project our team ran continuous feedback loops with the CEO and stakeholders, weekly meetings plus near-daily check-ins, and used them to pressure-test what was actually working. By paying attention to what resonated and what didn't, we moved from those early glass concepts to a high-polish, card-based system with far more clarity.
The lesson I am taking from Switchless is that designing the part you can't see, the data flow and the mental model underneath, matters as much as the screens on top. That is the work my Cognitive Science training prepared me for, and it's the part I want to keep doing.
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