Prototyping connected appliances on real products

As part of the SHAPE design system work, I co-created and led a prototyping system that helped Electrolux teams explore connected appliance experiences across products, apps, electronics, and services.

The system made it possible to prototype a holistic experience when hardware, firmware, mobile apps, APIs, cloud services, and physical controls all need to work together. It gave creative technologists and product owners a way to test ideas with real product behavior before committing to production implementation.

• Framed the capability as shared product infrastructure rather than a one-off demo
• Connected design-system patterns to physical products and live service behavior
• Aligned design, technology, product, and electronics stakeholders
• Supported creative technologists and product owners in testing end-to-end concepts

We designed a custom MCU that could communicate with products over the Electrolux messaging bus and testing cloud. The system could talk to existing and future products globally across different communication protocols, making it possible to test new service ideas across product categories.

The prototyping initiative and creative-technology capability continued to evolve after my tenure. Sam Thorne (whom I hired and managed directly) and Frederik Ueberschär, who worked within the wider organization I led, later developed new ways to connect Figma prototypes with physical controls and production-representative appliance displays.

In this Config 2026 presentation, they demonstrate Figma Rotaries and Figma Displays: later tools that enabled designers to test interface behavior, tactile input, scale, color, readability, and viewing conditions using representative physical hardware. They report reducing one design-review cycle from six months to two minutes and distributing the display tools to Electrolux design studios globally.

I did not create the tools shown in this presentation and had no role in the presentation itself. I include it as downstream evidence of how the initiative and organizational capability I established continued to develop under later team leadership.

• Improved Electrolux's ability to develop distinctive connected-product interfaces
• Shortened time to market for software products and services
• Supported consistent digital experiences within product categories
• Increased cross-functional collaboration
• Built in-house capability for strategically important connected experiences