1★ → 5★ App Transformation
ADT Pulse had the infrastructure. It didn't have user confidence. I led the design and research function through a full mobile experience overhaul, aligning product, engineering, and brand around a single directive: make the system feel as reliable as it actually was.
LEAD UX DESIGNER | RESEARCHER | WRITER
App Store Rating Climbed from 1 to 5 Stars in Under 3 Weeks
Alarm states were ambiguous enough to generate a measurable support burden and a reputational problem in the App Store. I reframed the design brief from "improve the UI" to "restore user confidence" -- then structured the team's work around that outcome.
HOMEAPAGE SCREEN
BEFORE
AFTER
Navigation Redesign Reduced Task Abandonment Across Core Flows
The navigation model had grown around engineering constraints rather than user behavior. I made the case to product leadership to treat nav as a strategic decision, not a design preference -- then led the cross-functional effort to rebuild it around what users actually needed in a high-stress moment.
NAVIGATION
1 Million Downloads with zero spike in support.
Support volume was a design problem being treated as a staffing problem. I repositioned in-app help as a product surface, not a documentation exercise, and worked with the product team to instrument it against support ticket categories. The top escalation drivers dropped without adding headcount.
ALARM SYSTEM AND STATES
Clear Alarm Sequence Stopped False Alarms From Escalating
Users had no visibility into the events leading up to a triggered alarm and no clear path to cancel a false one. I redesigned the full state sequence so every step was visible, readable, and actionable. The flow gave users control before the situation controlled them.
Users Noticed And Said So Publicly
The rating recovery wasn't accidental. I designed a strategically timed interstitial modal that interrupted the flow at the right moment. It gave users a natural pause to reflect and react. The modal made all the difference in driving up rates in three weeks.
"Finally an app that tells me what's actually happening. I used to ignore alerts because I couldn't tell if they were real. Now I trust it."
APP STORE REVIEW
"The system is a great backup to monitoring the house remotely. Notifications are correct giving you a good idea to what's going on. A good experience using the app."
APP STORE REVIEW
"App went from frustrating to genuinely useful. Arm and disarm from anywhere, alerts that actually tell you what to do. Huge improvement."
APP STORE REVIEW
Outcomes
Business impact, not just design delivery.
-
App Store rating recovered from 2 to 4 stars in under 3 weeks
-
Redesign scaled to over 1 million downloads without regression
-
Repositioned design as a driver of retention and trust, not just aesthetics
-
Established a reusable page template that removed design as a release bottleneck
Next
What I would have pushed for next:
-
Instrument task completion across core alarm flows to quantify navigation gains
-
Build a shared design system to reduce per-page production time further
-
Propose a quarterly UX research cadence tied to support ticket trends
-
Evaluate onboarding as the next highest-leverage retention surface