Whirlpool & Maytag

Context & Problem Framing

Whirlpool operates in a highly competitive appliance market where meaningful differentiation is increasingly difficult. To differentiate and regain leadership in the premium segment of appliances, the team developed a completely new-to-market dual-basket washer, which enables delicates and regular clothes to be washed at the same time, leading to a reduction in time, energy use, and cognitive effort.

Product Goals:

1. Reduce total wash time

2. Lower water and energy usage

3. Decreased mental overhead for users managing multiple loads 

The Question

How do you make a fundamentally new physical capability feel intuitive, trustworthy, and immediately usable, without disrupting deeply ingrained mental models around home laundry?

UX Requirements

1. Existing technology/engineering panel

2. Add new function into existing HMI

3. Don’t disrupt users existing and deep mental model of clothes washing

The Approach

The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) became the primary lever for bridging this gap, not only responsible for control, but for education, motivation, and confidence-building during first-time and repeat user.

My Role

I led UX Strategy and interaction design for the washer and dryer HMI, working within a tight, cross-functional team of industrail designers, mechanical and software engineers, and marketing partners. 

I was responsible for:
ADD IMAGES OF RESPONIBILITIES?

I was responsible for:

• End-to-end UX strategy for the HMI

• User research planning and synthesis 

• Journey mapping and scenario definition 

• User flow and interaction models 

• Information architecture and control logic 

• Defining scalable interaction patterns and component behaviors 

I collaborated closely on

• Functional requirements and technical feasibility

• Visual language alignment with brand and graphics teams 

• Engineering constraints, validation rules, and safety considerations 

This work spanned concept through detailed design and specification, an

Constraints & Realities

• Legacy engineering architecture: The HMI was built on an existing control platform, limiting flexibility in input types, system states, and responsiveness. 

• Regulatory and safety requirements: Specific interaction rules, e.g. button hold durations, lovk behaviors, were mandated to prevent unsafe use (child safety and accidental activation)

• Multi-brand considerations: The solution needed to scale across Whirlpool and Maytag, requiring subtle brand differentiation without fragementing the core interaction model

• Technical debt and late-stage validation: Early Industrial Design assumptions had not been fully stress-tested, requiring UX to reconcile usability issues later in the process without expanding scope or timelines. 

• Stakeholder misalignement: Marketing priorities around feature visibility occasionally conflicted with UX goals of clarity and cognitive simplicity 

• Limiting sensing and feedback technology: The machine could not “know” what users asumed it would, requiring careful expectation-setting through the interface 

These constraints made it clear that success would depend less on visual polish, and more on clear system logic and interaction discipline. 

Discovery & Insights

Early assumptions suggested that the dual-basket functionality could be introduced via a single new control on the HMI. However, when we mapped real user scenarios across the laundry lifecycle, from load planning to cycle completion, this approach quickly broke down.
Through journey mapping, user flow exploration, internal and secondary research, and system modeling we uncovered several critical insights.

Critical Insights:

1. Laundry is a habitual, low-attention activity - users rely heavily on muscle memory and pattern recognition

2. Introducing choice at the wrong moment increases hesitation and error, more than empowerment

3. Users need reassurance that the emachine was “doing the thing right” especially when two loads behaved differently within a single cycle. 

4. Transitions between setup, active wash, and completion were the moment of highest confusion and opportunity. 

The insight was not that users needed more control, but that they needed better timing, clearer feedback, and reduced deciision making burden. 

Design Strategy

Initial assumptions suggested the feature could be introduced with a single HMI control. However, scenario mapping revealed the interaction was more complex, requiring a deeper dive into the flow to ensure we were could support real-world use.

Our strategy focused on three priorities:
• Making the new capability intuitive through contextual guidance and progressive disclosure
• Reducing cognitive load by automating or clearly signaling key transitions
• Designing scalable interaction patterns to support future products

Execution

During the design execution phase phase, I focused on translating the strategy into a robust, testable interaction system

• Early concepts explored multiple mental models for dual-basket washers, included system-led automation, parallel clows, master-secondary relationship

• Iterative Refinement narrowed the solution to a model that balanced established system hardware with user agency 

• Detailed flows and specs defined edge cases, validation rules, and feedback states

• Component definitions ensured consistency across waher and dryer interfaces while allowing brand-level differentiation 

Rather than optimizing individual screens, the work prioritized flow integrity across time - from first interaction to cycle completion.