Whirlpool Commercial Laundry Product Revamp
Stepping above the competition by putting customer first
Whirlpool came to ANML to help reimagine the next phase of their commercial laundry offering. As the creative lead on the team, I was working side-by-side with Whirlpool’s laundry experts to identify the problems, the opportunities, and how decisions now can future-proof the product. Our solution is a one-two punch that combines brand new on-product capabilities with off-product transparency, control, and efficiency, becoming the foundation for commercial laundry’s future.
ROLE
User Experience
Art Direction
Visual Design
Prototyping
CLIENT
Whirlpool
The existing landscape
If you’ve been to a laundromat you know they have a lot of room for improvement. Unfortunately, most who frequent them have little to no choice. Disparate cycle costs, confusing error codes, and complicated service menus are things our three user-types, outlined below, can encounter on the daily. Our solution needs to be mindful of these when establishing the user-journeys, menu and cycle logic, and visual aesthetics.
Customer
People like you and me just trying to get their laundry done. In these environments, time is literally money so if something interrupts the cycle how would they know? This single example scenario shows the need for human-centered error handling and the peace of mind a connected experience could bring the customer.
Owner
They own the machines. No matter if in a laundromat or apartment complex, a big concern is repairs. Making them is inevitable but what about preemptive maintenance? Imagine one month there is a spike on the electricity bill. If the machines could individually log utility consumption then they could raise a flag when unexpected behaviors come up. This could help identify an issue before it becomes dangerous.
Service
The technicians servicing the machines don’t know what they are walking into. A connected machine could alert an appointed service tea thus allowing them to catch the problem before it gets more expensive for the owner. This could also allow the service technicians to have the necessary parts ready if they can see diagnostics beforehand.
Laying the foundation
There is a time and place for in-person collaboration. Given that we were working on a physical product for Phase 1, a multi-day workshop allowed all stakeholders (internal, external, engineering, design, account manager, leadership) to get on the same page by dissecting the current products, their competition, and ideating on how to solve for the pain points of our three distinct user-types.
These ideas would serve as the basis for not only the physical machine’s interface design but the amount and type of connectivity the machine would have that could support digital touchpoints.
Simplify & Prioritize
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Simplify & Prioritize •
Our north star
Moving into UX and visual design, “Simply & Prioritize” was something we continually came back to.
ON-PRODUCT
Remove complexity that provides no value for the consumer and diminished their trust in the product
OFF-PRODUCT
Provide valuable complexity to all stakeholders that grants tailored control and transparency
Improvements
The differences and improvements between the old and new interfaces start to add up pretty quickly. Here are a select few.
Reimagined display hardware and capabilities
Previously a display update would require the replacement of the whole display where now it can be made over-the-air.
Cycle selector and modifiers
Capacitive touch areas now show selection with local illumination
NEW LED status bar
Conveys machine status and cycle information in four distinct colors
NEW NFC & Bluetooth capability
Capacitive touch areas now show selection with local illumination.
Reducing key presses
For the service menu we were able to reduce the required key presses for each task. The largest reduction was from 18 down to 4.
Built-in off-product capabilities
(Phase 2 of project)Knowing that an off-product experience (both app and web based) were coming after Phase 1 we factored that into our flows, user-journeys, and documentation for engineering.
STAKEHOLDER EXCITEMENT
“I’m honestly the most excited I’ve ever been at Whirlpool… if we can deliver something close to this experience, I think we materially advance the industry and force it to be better.”
There’s so much more
It’s hard to share all the details of a project. There are prototypes, user-flows, failed UX ideas, and laughable visual explorations. Phase 2, which included bringing to life the off-product experience, was postponed but the ideas are there and ready to get started. If you’d like to work with me on a project like this I’d be happy to chat!