How we helped Lumina, a direct-to-consumer smart lighting brand, increase mobile engagement by 340% through a complete product redesign.
Good evening
Warm Glow
75% brightness
12
Lights
4h
Saved
98%
Happy
Client
Lumina Inc.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Timeline
12 weeks
Impact
+340% engagement
Lumina sold beautiful hardware — smart bulbs, ambient strips, and statement fixtures — but their mobile app told a different story. Users were frustrated by a cluttered interface, confusing navigation, and a complete lack of personality. The business was seeing a 62% drop-off during onboarding and a 4.2-star App Store rating that was steadily declining.
Users needed 5+ taps to adjust a single light's brightness. The bottom nav buried the most-used features under "Settings."
The app was purely functional — sliders and toggles with zero personality. It didn't reflect the warmth and beauty of Lumina's products.
Only 18% of users who completed onboarding were still active after 30 days. The app wasn't creating lasting habits.
Our mission was to transform the Lumina app from a utility tool into an experience that matched the emotional quality of their hardware. We set three measurable goals:
Reduce onboarding drop-off from 62% to under 25%
Streamline the first-time experience to under 60 seconds
Increase daily active usage by 200%
Create emotional hooks that make users open the app voluntarily
Raise App Store rating to 4.7+
Eliminate the top 3 complaints in user reviews
All three goals exceeded target by 20%+
We started by understanding the gap between how Lumina thought users interacted with their app versus how they actually did.
We conducted 14 usability sessions with Lumina customers — recording their screens as they tried to set up lights, create scenes, and share configurations. The results were eye-opening.
Key Insight
"Users didn't know what 'scenes' were. The term was too abstract. When we replaced it with 'Moods,' task completion jumped 41%."
The old app had 7 bottom-nav items and 3 sub-menus. We reduced it to 4 primary tabs, each with a clear purpose. The biggest shift: making the "Moods" tab the first thing users see, since that's what brought them joy.
Before
7 tabs, 14 screens
After
4 tabs, 9 screens
We created a design system called "Lumina Light" with 48 custom gradient presets, each mapped to real lighting scenarios. A "Sunset" gradient isn't just orange — it's the exact hex values from a sunset photo taken in Lisbon.
340%
Daily Active Usage
vs. previous quarter
67%
30-Day Retention
up from 18%
4.8
App Store Rating
up from 4.2 stars
-62%
Onboarding Drop-off
down to 23%
"The redesign didn't just make the app prettier — it made it understandable. Our support tickets dropped by 45% in the first month. The team understood our users in a way that felt almost empathetic."
Sarah Chen
VP of Product, Lumina Inc.
With Lumina, that meant stripping away complexity until only the warmth and simplicity remained. Every interaction was designed to make someone feel like their home was responding to them — not the other way around.
I'm currently accepting new projects for Q2 2025. If you're looking for a designer who cares deeply about craft, process, and outcomes — let's talk.