The company needed to evolve the commissioning app used by installers and technicians to configure connected lighting systems in commercial and industrial settings – a product inherited through an acquisition, never properly validated against users’ real workflows.
The scope covered a multi-persona ecosystem (installer, support technician, end user) across the full service lifecycle: on-site commissioning, remote assistance, post-installation control. The research goal was to map actual workflows and identify pain points and opportunities, giving the design team a solid foundation to build on instead of unverified internal assumptions.
🔍 Methodology
- Defined research objectives and participant selection criteria to represent the full service lifecycle;
- semi-structured qualitative interviews with two primary targets: support technician and field installer;
- contextual inquiry with a think-aloud protocol on the existing app, to observe actual behavior and mental models rather than stated feedback alone;
- profiling survey to support the qualitative findings;
- competitive benchmarking against 4 direct players in the sector;
- synthesis through end-to-end journey mapping and affinity mapping of insights.
👩 Role
UX Researcher
- Qualitative interviews
- Contextual inquiry
- Competitive benchmarking
🤝Stakeholders
- BU Manager
- Internal technical team
- External installers
📚 Key findings
Friction concentrates at handoff moments rather than within single features: incomplete upstream preparation leaves the installer to absorb the cost on-site, recognising the right physical device among those detected via Bluetooth is more of a cognitive challenge than a technical one, and the functional test meant to validate the work feels disconnected from the main flow.
On top of that, paper floor plans and manual annotations remain part of daily practice, and needs shift by role – speed for the installer, visibility for remote support, simplicity for the end user.
The problem, then, wasn’t which features were missing, but how to support users through these handoff moments – and that’s where the design direction originated.
🖋️ Design impact
Competitive benchmarking confirmed the same direction: across the sector, setting up a system works better as a guided, step-by-step flow rather than a free-form configuration.
Combining this pattern with the qualitative findings translated directly into design decisions: a step-based onboarding now guides users through the project → area → zone → device hierarchy, closing the gap between preparation and fieldwork.
Device discovery includes assisted physical identification, so installers can confidently match the right device. And post-commissioning management now lives in its own dedicated dashboard, giving testing and monitoring the visibility they were missing.
🖋️ Design impact
Competitive benchmarking confirmed the same direction: across the sector, setting up a system works better as a guided, step-by-step flow rather than a free-form configuration.
Combining this pattern with the qualitative findings translated directly into design decisions:
- a step-based onboarding now guides users through the project → area → zone → device hierarchy;
- closing the gap between preparation and fieldwork.
Device discovery includes assisted physical identification, so installers can confidently match the right device. And post-commissioning management now lives in its own dedicated dashboard, giving testing and monitoring the visibility they were missing.