By Allana Wooley, User Experience Lead, Lutron
When you think about lighting control, your first instinct may be to picture a physical interface – a wall switch or touchscreen – but today’s smart lighting solutions go well beyond traditional fixture and control aesthetics to holistically manage daylight, support occupant comfort, optimize energy use, and integrate with numerous other building systems.
For architects, interior designers, and lighting professionals, the challenge is to select a lighting control system that supports building performance goals and the overall design intent, while being readily comprehensible to the end-users who will live with it on a day-to-day basis. As app-based controls and integrated building systems become the norm, understanding the impact User Experience (UX) design has on building technology is essential for creating stunning, functional spaces that meet an occupant’s wants and needs.
In this article, we’ll explore how thoughtful UX design elevates the project and the end-user experience, why intuitive interfaces matter, and how to consider system UX in your lighting control system evaluations.
Image: Control apps are an increasingly common—and crucial—touchpoint of the user experience.
Choosing the right lighting control system demands the same rigor and research as the rest of the project. System capability, adaptability, installation complexity, day-to-day operation, and long-term maintenance are key, but ultimately, the lighting and control system is only as good as the user experience. If a system feels confusing or too complex, even the most capable solution may be underutilized and yield disappointing results.
Customer-Driven from the Start
Before introducing a new product or implementing system upgrades, UX professionals strive to gain a deep understanding of the product context and user needs. They conduct interviews with potential customers and stakeholders, including specifiers, installers, facility managers, and end users, to appreciate their needs in the space, identify their priorities, and understand both their level of expertise and how much bandwidth they have to focus on a lighting system: Do they want to guide the system or do they want the system to guide them? Where are the friction points? How can we simplify programming and operations? What will make each step more understandable? And how do these answers differ for each stakeholder?
Strong UX and product teams recognize that the final product, which exists in the space with end users, is only a small part of the overall product experience. A comprehensive UX solution will include tools to make specifications more efficient and straightforward, resources to make the commissioning and programming experience simple and fast, and training and support content to guide users throughout the process as needed.
Consider the design phase: if a manufacturer-specific tool requires duplicate data entry because it does not integrate with standard project management platforms, that creates friction. During commissioning, guided checklists and offline functionality can prevent delays. Post-installation, role-specific training, and in-app access to support day-to-day control and programming adjustments reduce frustration and callbacks. Treating these touchpoints as part of the essential UX ensures systems are easier to buy, easier to build, and easier to live with—key factors in competitive differentiation.
High stakes and real-world challenges
When choosing a control system, specifiers might look for next-level technology backed by proven performance. Installers might prioritize clear, repeatable workflows to minimize callbacks. Building occupants want simple wall controls or familiar apps that don’t require training time. Facility managers need flexibility, efficiency, the ability to make changes from anywhere at any time, and simple maintenance.
A single control system needs to meet all these needs. Thus is the challenge of commercial UX design – anticipate these factors and respond with clear workflows, offline-friendly features, and guardrails that prevent errors, reduce cognitive load, and build user confidence, ensuring systems can be used to their full potential. These outcomes depend on a design process grounded in research and iteration, which involves understanding user motivations, mapping workflows, and validating prototypes under real-world conditions. By contrast, careless UX has measurable costs: callbacks, extended training time, and underutilized features that erode system ROI.
Good design is especially essential when your product must perform in a high-stakes environment. System commissioning often occurs in a project’s final stages, just before a new building opens or a renovation is complete, when the design and construction team faces compressed timelines, looming deadlines, and busy job sites. Subsequently, end-users frequently make lighting adjustments during high-pressure moments, such as preparing a space for an executive presentation, a global meeting, a special event, or welcoming new employees. These scenarios illustrate the kind of contextual pressure—real-world conditions that can make tasks more challenging than they appear—that challenge system design.
Image: Control systems must be intuitive and powerful for a wide range of users, from designers and installers to facility managers and end-users.
Integration and scalability
Lighting systems are increasingly integrated into larger building ecosystems that may include HVAC, security, and AV systems, upping the UX complexity. Now, a system needs to work intuitively within its own ecosystem as well as with external data sources and systems, each with its own UX philosophy.
UX designers must consider how something like the service dashboard interacts with the lighting system software, app, and any physical controls in the space. Will the system still make sense if there’s a long gap between adjustments or automated updates? What if the facility manager changes – will the next person be able to understand the dashboard? It’s part of the UX team’s responsibility to consider how they can make it easier for all other stakeholders to do their jobs.
When you’re evaluating systems, go beyond feature lists
When choosing a lighting control system, take the time to evaluate system options based on critical core competencies. These questions can help to reveal whether the user experience will be everything you expect, and whether it is treated as a core aspect of product performance or an afterthought:
- Can everyday tasks be completed quickly under job-site conditions?
- Does the interface support offline commissioning?
- Are recovery paths clear when errors occur?
- How does the manufacturer incorporate user feedback into system updates?
- How easy is it to troubleshoot when something goes wrong?
- Can the everyday user interact with the system without training?
Features that are difficult to access or understand don’t add value, regardless of technological innovation. Designing for the long term through holistic UX ensures systems perform as intended, scale seamlessly, and get smarter over time to provide lasting value.
Beyond the wall switch lies a human-centered challenge: creating systems and products that work under pressure, across various roles, and within complex ecosystems to enhance the building experience. When we meet that challenge, user experience design fulfills its promise—not just on paper, but in practice.
About the Author:
Allana Wooley is the User Experience Lead at Lutron Electronics, where she is focused on researching the commercial construction industry and designing solutions for stakeholders from specification to maintenance, and everything in between.
All images courtesy of Lutron.
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