Research, interaction design, prototyping, testing, design direction, documentation, and engineering handoff.
Foundations · 2017 / Zodiac Pool Systems
Connected products
A complicated pool should not need a complicated app.
Before Airspace, I worked with a team to design iAquaLink, the mobile app for Zodiac Pool Systems, a maker of pool pumps, heaters, lights, and robotic cleaners. Pool professionals needed to configure intricate equipment; homeowners needed to control it without learning the whole system. The work was to put the right complexity in the right hands, and to start learning long before the full automation platform was finished.
A connected-product story about turning one enormous promise into smaller releases that could teach the team what the system needed to become.
Professionals needed detailed setup. Homeowners needed simple, confident control of the pool they lived with every day.
Research and test each useful slice with pros and homeowners, then carry what worked into the flagship.
Across roughly 98,000 iPhone ratings, years after these releases shipped. Mobile was the surface I worked on.
Timeline
The artifact / Try it
Four pieces of equipment, one app. To build the flagship automation system we looked for opportunities to support smaller, stand-alone products first, then carried our learnings through to the next piece.
- 01Pick a piece of equipment.
- 02Adjust it. The dial, the tiles and the timers are live.
- 03Notice how little you have to relearn each time.
EquipmentFour products, one app
Each one shipped on its own, before the whole system existed.
2:36
Heating to
29.0°
Pool27.5°
Air6°
Silent Mode
Quiet operation for maintaining water temp. Only active at air temperatures above +10°C.
Running custom speed
00:22:21
1975RPM26Watts
Stop
Next schedule
No active schedules15°
Running
01:34
SMART CycleFloor, wall & waterline
Stop
RemoteClean modeLift system
Pool78°
Air89°
SWC50%
Emerald green
Power
Five presets pulled from the fixture’s factory palette.
Start
Cascades over the raised wall at the shallow end.
Solar80°
Heating with the sun
Solar Heat
Diverts filtered water through the roof array whenever it runs hotter than the pool.
Redrawn from the shipped app. iPhone App Store today / 4.7 stars / 98K ratings ↗
01 / The ask
The flagship was too large to learn from quickly.
In 2017 I joined a new app team at Zodiac Pool Systems to help design the company’s flagship: one connected system that could automate an entire backyard pool. The ambition made sense. Pool professionals, the people who install and service the equipment, could handle a detailed setup, while the homeowner’s everyday experience stayed simple and premium.
But software was only one part of the work. The flagship also depended on hardware, and a complete, fully flexible version would take a long time to bring together. Shipping it as one all-or-nothing release would have postponed the learning we needed most.
The right MVP is not a smaller promise. It is a useful piece of the system.
02 / The loop
Every control was a chance to learn the system.
We made the work deliberately iterative. For each capability, I studied earlier patterns and competitors, talked with users, sketched and prototyped, then tested with pool professionals and homeowners. The team shared what we learned, adjusted the direction, documented the best current approach, and handed it to engineering with the reasoning attached.
Alternating between the two audiences mattered. A control that made sense to someone configuring equipment might still confuse the person using it on a hot Saturday. The goal was not to flatten the complexity everywhere; it was to put the right complexity in the right hands.
Make one real action easier to complete.
Each release focused on a useful job: adjusting heat, controlling a pump, setting lighting, or caring for equipment.
Let setup and daily use correct each other.
Professionals and homeowners revealed different needs, which made the boundary between configuration and control more intentional.
Carry the clearest interaction forward.
A shared control language made each new surface easier to understand and easier for the team to build.
03 / The pivot
A platform can arrive one piece at a time.
So we did not wait for the flagship. We looked for products that could stand on their own, like a stand-alone heat pump or a robotic pool cleaner, and released a focused control for each one while the larger system was still taking shape. Controls for the rest were tested the same way and carried into the flagship experience, where people saw only the equipment they actually owned. Every release taught us something about the complete experience still to come.
Pumps, heat, lighting, and cleaning each offered a valuable starting point without requiring the entire automation system to be finished first.
Full-page, focused controls helped people make adjustments without asking them to understand a dense equipment dashboard.
Patterns repeated where they should, so each release could feel like part of a growing product system rather than a separate utility.
04 / What stayed
The piece-wise approach proved out.
Working in smaller releases did not abandon the larger pool-automation vision. It gave the team a practical way to move toward it: deliver controls people could use now, learn how they behaved in context, and keep assembling the product from validated pieces.
The app is still out there, and people still live with it. Mobile was my focus, and years on the iPhone app holds 4.7 stars across roughly 98,000 ratings, with most of the same interface concepts still in place.