Design that sells: how a UI redesign drove €150K in a day

Homey is a smart home hub — the kind of product that lives in the background, quietly connecting your devices. But their mobile app? That needed a full rethink. It looked outdated, didn’t reflect the product’s quality, and certainly didn’t belong on the front of a retail box.

I was brought in to redesign the entire mobile experience from the ground up. Not just to modernise the UI, but to make it feel like something you’d expect from a sleek piece of smart tech — polished, minimal, a little futuristic. Because smart home products aren’t just functional anymore — they’re lifestyle products. And the app often becomes the main interface people associate with the brand. That meant the design needed to do more than just “work” — it needed to represent.

And there was an added twist: the new UI would also appear on product packaging. So the visual design had to shine — in screenshots, in stores, and on shelves.

After sharing the first visual directions, the client’s response was overwhelming. So much so, they decided to post a sneak preview on their blog — even though I was still mid-design. That one post sparked a flood of positive reactions from users. People were excited. Only… we were nowhere near launch-ready.

Weeks later, after careful iteration and implementation, the redesigned app finally launched in the App Store. The hardware remained exactly the same. No firmware updates. No product changes. Just a new app.

And then something unexpected happened.

At the Homey office, they had a gong that rings every time a sale comes in through their webshop. That day, it barely stopped ringing. Over €150,000 in revenue — in a single day. Just from launching the new app design.

It was one of those rare moments where you see the direct business impact of design — not over months of A/B testing or silent improvements, but immediately. Same product. New experience. And suddenly, people saw it differently.