Juul Labs

In 2021 I was brought on at JUUL Labs Inc. as a contractor to help with the design of the latest iteration of their Android app. Impressed by the exceptional team behind the company's connected device software experiences, I accepted a full-time offer. You can imagine my hesitation at first though: the term JUUL is synonymous with thousands of lawsuits in US and a steep rise in teenage nicotine addiction. But it was immediately clear upon joining that those were the actions of the old guard and this new team only had one mission: transition the world's cigarette smokers to vaping as a form of harm reduction. We also aimed to empower users by providing comprehensive vaping usage data, enabling them to make informed decisions about their nicotine consumption (compliance with FDA regulations necessitated careful wording when suggesting reduced usage).

Despite the rockiness of the company this was actually the most stable team I'd ever worked with. Design, Engineering, and Management were all completely in sync. I worked remotely with two world-class product designers including my esteemed colleague Michelle Schirlin, whom I had previously collaborated with at ngmoco. Furthermore, the company fostered a culture of active participation, with employees eagerly engaging in usability testing, and engineers displaying enthusiasm for tackling complex UI animations and motifs. There's so much more work that I'd love to showcase and I'm looking forward to the team's successful product launches ahead.

Retail Store Finder

The old retail store finder was showing its age; there were signs that various features had been removed while others had been tacked on at a later date so we made the call to start from scratch. I refreshed the main components with the latest version of our style guide, introduced search filters, simplified interactions between the map and list view, and implemented changes made to core UI components from the latest iteration of Material Design. I also prioritized the organization and structure of our internal Figma docs with a clear outline of all possible user flows to smooth out the handoff process to engineers and any future designers.

Live Notifications

We introduced live notifications to allow users to keep track of their JUUL2 device from their phone without opening the app. Users would be alerted if their device's battery is low, if it's time to replace their e-liquid pod, or if they left the house without it. We could even automatically disable the JUUL2 from producing vapor if connection to the phone was lost to prevent unauthorized usage.
When connected, the main notification featured a dynamic app icon that clearly depicted battery and e-liquid levels in real-time. The icon would change and feature a unique icon for each possible alert type.

Permission Requests

Obtaining mobile OS permissions can be challenging, particularly when your app relies on Bluetooth and location services. We discovered that a significant portion of users often denies all permission requests due to a lack of trust in non-stock apps. To address this, we implemented a step-by-step tour approach, guiding users through Android's intricate permission prompts.

More to showcase pending future public launches.

Tim Shundo © 2023
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