Smart Appliances
As Quirky evolved, the products we developed matured. Not only was the product team gaining more experience in building complex designs, it was also starting to build product portfolio’s that met the market’s demand at rapid speeds. Our vibrant community flooded us with brilliant ideas for smart appliances through our invention platform. Recognizing a golden opportunity, we decided to embark on an exciting journey of creating our very own smart appliance brand. We partnered with Amazon’s replenishment program so that when items were running low, our smart appliances would do the ordering for you.
My role as a Design Director was to spot product portfolio ideas that had promise and flesh out the concept. With thousands of ideas submitted and hundreds of product launches onto our virtual site, our team had lots of ideas to choose from. My role was to help identify potential winners and work with the design and engineer team to prove the concepts with prototypes and refine the user-experience. And if I wasn’t in the product lab, my team could be found in the kitchen cooking up recipes for proof-of-concept. The final designs were a collaboration from key designers to take the products to the finish line. Along with our creative and marketing team, we found strategic product lines to launch under specific brands.
