Celebrating a history of firsts Best suited for:
- Venture-backed smart home and IoT companies
- Established appliance, security, energy, and consumer technology brands
- Product teams building a device family, platform, or connected service
- Leaders facing a launch, ecosystem, adoption, or category-definition milestone
Fuseproject solutions
Connected Home & Smart Product Design
For funded founders and product leaders creating intelligent devices, appliances, architectural systems, and connected ecosystems that need to feel natural, trustworthy, premium, and ready for daily life.
Connected-home products rarely fail because the technology is not useful. They fail when setup is confusing, trust is fragile, ecosystems feel fragmented, or the product looks and behaves like technology added to a home instead of something that belongs there.
The gap between connected technology and a home people want to live with.
The technical stack may work in a lab, but real homes introduce shared users, unreliable networks, existing hardware, installation constraints, privacy expectations, and years of everyday wear.
Fuseproject aligns product strategy, industrial design, digital experience, brand, and commercialization so intelligence feels coherent across the device, interface, service, environment, and company behind it.
What connected home design must solve
A useful device is not enough. The system has to belong.
01
Make intelligence feel effortless
Reduce visible complexity. Design onboarding, controls, automation, feedback, and recovery paths around how people actually live—not how the technology is organized.
02
Create one coherent ecosystem
Unify hardware, app, service, packaging, installation, support, and future product families so every touchpoint strengthens the same experience and brand.
03
Earn trust in the home
Build legible states, privacy cues, manual overrides, multi-user permissions, security expectations, and clear behavior into the product from the beginning.
04
Design for years, not launches
Balance interoperability, Matter readiness, serviceability, material longevity, manufacturing, software evolution, and architectural fit so the product can stay useful.
1MM
August users within five years of launch
7
Connected access products designed across the August portfolio
Acquired
August joined Yale / ASSA ABLOY
World Class
Usability status for the Hive thermostat experience
Featured connected-home work
DOMA Home
The first intelligent home platform designed to unify the home without gadgets or visual clutter.
DOMA embeds sensing, identity recognition, motorized movement, security, and environmental intelligence directly into doors and windows. Fuseproject brought experience design, industrial design, digital design, naming, brand, and art direction together as one architectural system.
The result is a connected-home vision where technology supports warmth, safety, sanctuary, and daily flow without constantly asking for attention.
- Embedded intelligence instead of added gadgetry
- Architectural-grade product and experience design
- Matter-compliant ecosystem thinking
- Brand, industrial design, UX, and digital expression aligned
Selected proof across the connected home
From category creation to ecosystem expansion.
Fuseproject has helped founders and global brands make connected experiences easier to understand, more desirable to live with, and more credible in the market.
August Home
Fuseproject co-founded August and built the connected home-access experience from the ground up: product, interface, app, brand, packaging, portfolio, go-to-market, and retail expression.
Business outcome: a category-defining smart lock platform that earned consumer trust, expanded into a connected product family, and was acquired by Yale / ASSA ABLOY.
Hive / British Gas
Fuseproject designed the thermostat form factor and digital experience together, making setup, scheduling, overrides, and everyday control more approachable for a broad consumer audience.
Experience outcome: familiar controls, discreet technology, adaptable materials, and a user experience that achieved “World Class” usability status in testing.
Integrated connected-product capabilities
One partner across the physical, digital, and emotional experience.
Product and category strategy
Define the human need, market position, product architecture, business model implications, and the reason the connected experience should exist.
Industrial design and CMF
Create durable, ownable forms, materials, interfaces, sensors, indicators, controls, and installation details that fit the home.
Connected product UX and UI
Design onboarding, device states, automation, permissions, notifications, apps, dashboards, and fallback experiences as one system.
Ecosystem and interoperability
Plan product families, platform relationships, Matter and multi-ecosystem behavior, service layers, and future roadmap logic.
Brand and go-to-market
Build the name, story, identity, packaging, launch expression, retail experience, and adoption narrative around the product.
Manufacturing and commercialization
Connect design ambition to engineering collaboration, materials, supply realities, cost, serviceability, and a credible path to market.
How Fuseproject works
Design the experience and the company around it.
Connected-home programs work best when hardware, digital, brand, engineering, manufacturing, and market decisions advance together rather than being handed off in sequence.
01 — Align
Clarify the business objective, user context, technology constraints, ecosystem, stakeholder needs, and the market milestone that defines success.
02 — Define
Shape the connected experience, product architecture, brand promise, service logic, key moments, trust model, and portfolio opportunity.
03 — Design
Develop the industrial design, CMF, interaction model, digital experience, prototypes, brand system, and launch expression in parallel.
04 — Commercialize
Support engineering and manufacturing collaboration, testing, portfolio planning, go-to-market, partner alignment, and category introduction.
Strong fit
Your team is ready to move from connected feature to connected experience.
- You have funding, executive sponsorship, or an established product business.
- There is a real product, platform, portfolio, or architectural system to bring to market.
- The physical product, digital experience, and brand need to be solved together.
- You are facing a meaningful launch, redesign, adoption, or ecosystem milestone.
- You value category definition and long-term differentiation—not cosmetic styling alone.
Probably too early
The idea still needs validation before a world-class design partnership.
- The product is still a broad idea without a defined user, technology path, or business sponsor.
- The goal is a low-cost visual concept, isolated app screen, or styling exercise.
- There is no realistic path to engineering, manufacturing, integration, or launch.
- The team is seeking unpaid speculative concepts or a quick logo before product definition.
- Budget, decision ownership, and timeline are not yet connected to a real initiative.
Connected Home Product Readiness Framework
Still exploring? Start with five readiness questions.
A serious connected-home design program does not require every answer to be finished. It does require enough clarity for the right questions, tradeoffs, and decisions to become visible.
01
The human problem is specific
You can describe whose home experience improves and why the current alternative creates friction, anxiety, waste, cost, or missed value.
02
The technology path is credible
Core sensing, connectivity, intelligence, mechanics, or platform assumptions have enough evidence to support serious design work.
03
The ecosystem is understood
You know which platforms, devices, household members, installers, service teams, and partners must participate in the experience.
04
A milestone creates urgency
A fundraise, pilot, partner commitment, manufacturing decision, product launch, portfolio expansion, or executive mandate is driving the work.
05
The team can make integrated decisions
Product, engineering, business, brand, and leadership can align around one experience rather than optimizing separate workstreams.
Frequently asked questions
Connected home product design, answered.
Clear answers for founders, product leaders, and innovation teams evaluating an integrated connected-product design partner.
A connected home product design firm helps integrate product strategy, industrial design, connected device UX, interface design, ecosystem planning, brand, engineering collaboration, manufacturing considerations, and go-to-market into one coherent product experience.
The strongest moment is usually when the company has funding or executive sponsorship, a credible technology direction, and a milestone such as prototype definition, pilot, portfolio expansion, manufacturing, launch, or category positioning.
Industrial design focuses on the physical product. Connected product design also includes onboarding, apps, device states, permissions, automation, notifications, services, ecosystem behavior, data and privacy cues, support, and the brand experience surrounding the device.
Yes. Fuseproject’s connected-product work brings physical product, digital experience, interface, experience strategy, brand, and commercialization together so the device and software feel like one product.
Matter can reduce ecosystem friction, but a protocol does not design the experience. Teams still need to decide setup, multi-admin behavior, permissions, device states, recovery, differentiation, service logic, privacy communication, and what happens when networks or integrations fail.
Trust comes from predictable behavior, understandable feedback, clear privacy and security choices, legible permissions, physical controls or overrides where appropriate, reliable recovery, respectful automation, and a brand that explains the value without hiding the tradeoffs.
Potentially, especially when the device has category ambition, complex physical-digital interaction, a meaningful adoption challenge, or the potential to become a broader platform or product family.
Yes. Fuseproject works with funded startups, established product companies, global brands, corporate innovation teams, and leaders building new connected businesses or expanding existing portfolios.
Bring the user problem, product or technology status, business objective, funding or sponsorship context, target milestone, major constraints, current team, and the decisions that feel most urgent or unresolved.
Timing depends on scope, maturity, testing, engineering, manufacturing, and launch requirements. A focused phase may take several months, while an integrated product, brand, digital, and commercialization program can extend across the product-development lifecycle.
Ready to connect?
Make the connected home feel less like technology, and more like home.
If you have a funded product, active program, credible prototype, portfolio opportunity, or launch milestone, tell Fuseproject what you are trying to make real.
- Connected devices and appliances
- Home access, security, climate, energy, and wellness
- Device families, platforms, and services
- Embedded architectural intelligence
- Integrated product, digital, brand, and commercialization programs
Prefer the general contact form? Visit Fuseproject contact.
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