Manual, fragmented work
Gas detector installation and maintenance was traditionally labour-intensive, paper-heavy, and often required engineers to work in pairs.
Case Study
Honeywell Sensepoint XCL
Designing a smarter installation and maintenance experience for industrial gas detection.
As part of a collaboration with Design Partners and Honeywell, I led the digital experience design for a connected mobile solution that worked alongside the Honeywell Sensepoint XCL industrial gas detector.
Company / Client
Honeywell, with Design Partners
My role
Digital Experience Lead
Timeline
Commercial product programme
Focus
Installation, commissioning, calibration, and maintenance workflows
Project Snapshot
A connected field workflow for a safety-critical product
Reduce friction without reducing confidence
Industrial gas detectors are critical safety products. The experience needed to simplify complex workflows while preserving trust, sequence, and technical accuracy.
Digital lead across research and product design
I led ethnographic research, translated field insight into product requirements, designed key mobile flows, prototyped realistic scenarios, and supported hardware-software alignment.
A more efficient product ecosystem
The final product experience contributed to measurable efficiency improvements across installation, commissioning, calibration, and maintenance.
Impact Signals
Efficiency gains across the field workflow
15 minInstallation reduction per device
8 hrsWeekly paperwork reduction
1 personCalibration workflow enabled
5 marketsRemote research across Ireland, UK, Germany, US, and Netherlands
Before / After
From legacy constraints to guided field confidence
Slow, manual, paper-heavy
- Engineers frequently worked in pairs.
- Paper forms introduced duplicated effort and potential for error.
- Installation and commissioning involved multiple steps across hardware and documentation.
- Workflows were shaped by legacy constraints rather than the real needs of field engineers.
Connected, sequenced, reliable
- A mobile companion experience connected wirelessly to the physical detector.
- The app guided engineers through installation, commissioning, calibration, and maintenance.
- Status, sequence, and completion feedback helped engineers know what needed to happen next.
- The digital product quietly removed effort from a larger safety-critical system.
System Model
The product experience had to work across physical, digital, and compliance touchpoints
InstallerField engineer doing real work in constrained environments
Mobile AppGuidance, connection, sequence, status, confirmation
Gas DetectorHoneywell Sensepoint XCL physical safety product
MaintenanceCalibration, commissioning, ongoing checks
ComplianceRecords, confidence, reduced paperwork risk
Process
From field research to realistic product validation
Field research
I led ethnographic research across three countries, shadowing and interviewing gas maintenance engineers as they completed real jobs.
Remote validation
We conducted remote interviews with users in Ireland, the UK, Germany, the US, and the Netherlands, and gathered survey responses from 13 expert users.
Workshops
We ran workshops with Honeywell and Design Partners to align around product opportunity, user needs, and the end-to-end experience.
Design approach
The design challenge was not simply to create an app interface. It was to reduce friction across a safety-critical field workflow.
Native prototype
To make testing realistic, we created a native prototype that interacted with the physical device.
User testing
We tested in Ireland and the Netherlands, observing how engineers interacted with the app, the detector, and the broader workflow.
Artifacts
Research, workflow, and interface artifacts
Design Decisions
Principles that shaped the experience
Make the next step obvious
For field engineers, the most important thing was knowing what needed to happen next and whether the task had been completed successfully.
Show whether the device is responding
The app experience focused on clarity and confidence, especially around wireless connection, technical feedback, and completion states.
Design for real field conditions
The value of the work came from understanding the engineer, the device, the environment, paperwork, safety requirements, and business need for efficiency.
Reflection
Designing across physical and digital touchpoints
This project was a strong example of designing across physical and digital touchpoints. The value of the work came from understanding the full service context: the engineer, the device, the environment, the paperwork, the safety requirements, and the business need for efficiency.
Rather than treating the app as a standalone interface, we designed it as part of a broader product ecosystem. The digital experience helped make the physical product easier to install, commission, use, and maintain.
For me, the project reinforced the importance of field research, realistic prototyping, and designing around the actual conditions in which people work. In complex industrial environments, great experience design is often about removing small but meaningful points of friction from a larger system.