Molekule
Senior Product Designer

At Molekule I was accountable for ensuring high design quality across all Molekule hardware and software product touch points with special emphasis on Molekule’s consumer mobile app and digital design system. This included leading the design process and fostering an organizational environment that supported the delivery of design excellence.

Molekule User Interview Program

When I joined Molekule the first thing I did was set up a user interview program. The key to solving any design problem lies in seeing the world through the user’s eyes. Understanding real users' needs and pain points are not just important for my success as a designer—but also vital for a brand and business to resonate with both customers and prospective customers.

Creating a recurring conversation with users allowed us to get feedback on potential and active initiatives and report back to the executive team on how real people were reacting to our products.

Covalent Design System

During my early observation sessions I noticed that the users weren’t clicking on several interactive elements of the app and accessing data related to their air purifier. This was concerning as it meant all the time and money spent on developing and shipping those features wasn’t being utilized to its full potential. 

Molekule’s legacy design system needed to be simplified in some areas (such as the typography), while other areas needed more nuance (such as color and signifiers of interaction). Over the next months I worked to design, align stakeholders (including product leadership, the product manager, program manager, engineering, and brand) and publish, ‘Covalent’, Molekule’s next-gen design system that would unify the brand through all digital touchpoints: DTC website, mobile app, and the on-product digital interface.

Implementation of the Covalent system on our DTC website helped contribute to CVR growing from 1.01% in 2023 to 1.25% in 2024.

Outdoor Air

One key objective of Molekule’s product team was to increase user engagement on the app, as measured by session length and frequency.

I had learned from my interviews that a common trigger for people to check their Molekule app was looking outside and seeing bad air, which would cause them to wonder what the air quality inside their house was. Other users reported opening their Molekule app and then opening air quality websites and apps like airnow.org or their native weather app. These user insights were valuable in the OKR alignment process and helped prioritize the feature launch.  

Through white boarding sessions and team brainstorms, we developed concept sketches, which I then digitized to create higher-fidelity concepts for user feedback. Worked with program manager, product manager, and engineering to complete and ship the feature with no snags. One long-term Molekule employee described the Outdoor Air feature launch as ‘the smoothest app feature launch in the history of Molekule’.

Our mission was to launch a feature that resonated with our users and that proved to be true as the feature was accessed by our users on 37% of all app sessions and increased daily users by 20%.

Whole Home Air

Molekule’s product line was expanding beyond air purifiers to include HVAC air filters, air quality monitors, and humidifiers. Users would need one screen to see their entire home’s air quality at a glance. The challenge was that Molekule had four different types of air purifiers, each generation with their own way of displaying air quality, while some products such as the HVAC air filters weren’t smart, and other products were connected with limited functionality. 

We knew that having a home screen with each connected product displayed as a tile would be the most intuitive for our users. The real challenge was the product tiles, we spent many days discussing how much content we wanted to show. In the end we landed on a modular design that showed the air score of that room along with a product photo and space for an alert icon, which would cause users to enter the device control screen for more options.