Litio IoT

Have you ever bought “smart” lights… and then spent ten minutes trying to do something as simple as dimming them?

That friction was the starting point for Litio IoT.
Their lighting systems were strong: efficient, adaptable, built for real homes and real buildings. The app, however, was doing too much at once. It worked… but it didn’t feel easy.

Services:

• Product design
• Interface redesign
• User research
• Prototyping

Industry:

• IoT
• Smart lighting
• Energy efficiency

The team:

• Product manager
• Developers
• Visual designer
• UX designer (me)

Year:

2017

What is Litio IoT

Litio IoT builds smart LED lighting systems that blend efficiency with modern automation. Their users range from homeowners creating scenes for daily life, to professionals managing lighting across larger spaces. The product sits in the intersection of comfort, control, and energy awareness, which means the experience has to be both practical and trustworthy.

Project overview

When the redesign started, users were getting stuck.

Navigation felt dense. Feedback wasn’t consistent. Simple actions took too many steps. The result showed up in the places businesses feel quickly: low engagement and frequent support requests.

The goal was clear and measurable: make the app easier to use, visually cleaner, and give users better control over their lighting, without turning customization into a puzzle.

We worked on a two-quarter timeline, with regular checkpoints and decisions made quickly to keep the scope realistic.

Scope of work

The work began with finding patterns in what users were struggling with and what they were trying to accomplish.

Three broad user groups shaped the decisions:

  • people who wanted energy savings through automation

  • people managing lighting across multiple locations

  • people focused on mood and personalization

From there, the redesign focused on a few things that mattered most:

  • clearer navigation that doesn’t feel like a settings maze

  • lighting scenes that are easy to create and adjust

  • more visibility into energy usage, without overwhelming the interface

Design and build moved in short cycles with the product manager and developers, so decisions stayed grounded in feasibility and timelines. Weekly syncs kept priorities tight and avoided drifting into “nice to have” territory.

Final result

The redesigned Litio app shipped as a calmer, more predictable control hub — one that supported quick actions and deeper customization without making users work for it.

Within three months of release, the app saw a aumento del 40% de los usuarios activos diarios y una 25% reduction in support tickets. Those numbers mattered, but the pattern behind them mattered more: people were spending less time figuring out the interface and more time actually using the product — building scenes, managing devices, and adjusting lighting as part of daily routines.

The redesign also gave the team a stronger foundation to build on. Instead of adding features onto a fragile structure, new capabilities could be introduced without breaking the experience.

What this project reinforced

Smart products don’t win because they have more options.
They win when the options feel manageable.

This project was a reminder that “advanced” doesn’t need to feel complicated — and that the fastest way to reduce support load isn’t writing more help articles. It’s removing the moments that create confusion in the first place.