The Plume product suites — Head of Design
As Head of Design, I led Plume’s product suites through startup scale — consumer mesh WiFi into a platform for Communications Service Providers (CSPs/ISPs). Breathing AdaptiveWiFi™, Sketch/Zeplin systems before Figma, modular CSP app, atomic email-as-product, Series B→unicorn.
Plume began as a consumer product. By 2018 we were already shipping CSP surfaces and messaging for enterprise buyers alongside the home experience. Dual-audience product is a design-engine problem — consumer calm and CSP density must share one component soul or the brand splits.
Today's stack for the product suites
Today I'd frame the app around one hypothesis: when the network explains what it just did, members stop calling to ask whether their Wi-Fi is broken. That makes the content model the product. Every home signal falls into a notification taxonomy (inform, ask, act) with rules for when the app speaks and when it stays quiet. Claude drafts the copilot voice for each case, such as AdaptiveWiFi moving a device to a cleaner channel, a new device joining, or a guest network expiring. The drafts get scored against real scenarios before a human picks the line.
The breathing pod would be a Rive state machine, with calm, adapting, and alert as inputs the app drives from live network state, so engineering ships the real behavior instead of approximating a video. CSP theming would sit in token modes behind Figma variables, so one app re-skins for hundreds of providers by region and device set without forking. Prototypes would test the moments that build trust: the "here's what I changed" explainer, an undo, and the threshold where the app decides not to interrupt.
Email gets the same treatment as product. The atomic modules carry day/night and desktop/mobile as real states, assemble from the same tokens, and get tested across clients in Litmus before billing, legal, or marketing ever sends one.
Time Range
In 2016 our product team of 5 people embarked to build a novel experience into a superior product
The original challenge
It's 2016, and no one has ever heard of "mesh" WiFi or other distributed solutions. The consumer only knows about WiFi routers with bigger and bigger antennas, and WiFi "extenders" that always suck.
It's not enough to be groundbreaking technology that solves a ubiquitous frustration in modern homes. We must be a product that is understood, embraced, and converts users into ambassadors.
We set out to create a solution to bad WiFi that was more than a utility. It is to be a product with emotional journey and an experience to show there is more behind the veil of consumer simplification than machine intelligence. There is a team with conviction the muscle to takes beyond today's expectations.
The start of a solution
Even at our beginnings, the product was more than an app, and more than hardware. It was a synthesis of inspiring interfaces, tactile experiences, proactive emails and content, active customer support, attention to detail at every turn, and an experience to use for even the most simple user goals.
We obsessed over the texture of the ethernet cable. We deliberated endlessly over interactions. We crafted a user interface that literally breathing, showing it is alive and aware to optimize your home continuously.
The mobile interface was not a utility, it was an experience. I was honored to be part of a team brave enough to take such a stance to push beyond. We were intolerant to the mundane.
We pushed ourselves to give end users a sense of connection with the voice of their home
Challenge
Most WiFi related products have been all about serving the user in the form of a direct utility, with knobs and toggles, port-forwarding fields and advanced functions — the idea that home networking could be more personable was scoffed as noise and decoration.
But home WiFi was only the beginning for Plume. We were building a platform for your digital home on the internet for not just connectivity, but the backbone of all digital experiences in family life. Our solution needed identity and relationship with end users — to instill integrity, confidence, companionship, and character.
Solution
Our interface was alive and conversational. The home screen featured the meditative, breathing, pod of your online network. It instilled calmness and confidence in the happy state that everything is working well. The system is alive and aware to adapt.
This AdaptiveWiFi™ behaved as a concierge in your hand. Greeting the user with good morning, afternoon, or nights. It bubbled up the most important timely information and allowed all other analysis to fall away to be accessed in the UI for further examination.
With continued awareness of people and devices on the network
Network complexity was always abstracted away but in rare cases integrated into the experience
We built design systems using Sketch and Zeppelin before Figma had taken charge of collaboration
Our prototypes were thorough dev guides for nuanced animation and interaction
We were the first home networking solution to allow multiple passwords on a single SSID
And introduced AI Security powered by the insights of millions of Plume home networks
Now every action by every device can be known and managed by the home owner
In 2020 our product team began to reinvent the consumer app as a platform for modular services
Challenge
With hardware, CSPs were enabled to roll out new services on the fly and without firmware updates. But that was still not the case for our end user consumer app.
As our platform was adopted by hundreds of CSPs around the world — along with most of the major ones like Comcast, Vodafone, etc. — there grew a need to provide these Communication Service Providers (CSPs) with end user interfaces that were as flexible for new service integration as our back-end systems.
Solution
We were already targeting an interface that could be hyper-modular and endlessly flexible to dynamic content.
Depending on a user's region, CSP internet provider, devices in the home, and even the weather, the Plume consumer app would tailor itself to the changing circumstances to be endlessly accommodating.
This new version was created during our rebrand in 2020 to help drive the cohesion of our identity.
Our atomic email system was as much part of the product experience as the mobile app
Challenge
Anyone who designs for emails knows: email clients suck. They are super limiting, can't do anything fancy, and have stifled a lot of innovation in the industry.
We had countless needs for email communications and they were coming from multiple audience types, multiple use cases — some product, some marketing, some legal/admin, and billing — and all of these requirements converged directly on my team.
We needed a solution that would be modular, scalable, easy to implement — but as always, in Plume fashion, they needed to be undeniably compelling and beyond simply looking pretty. At Plume, we created experiences above everything else.
With partnership from a few stakeholders internally, we launched on a effort to create a unified email system for all communications.
Solution
Our email system built with the new Plume brand was created to be open, flexible, and consistent.
Figma designs were completely modular and swappable — using on an atomic design system.
Responsiveness between desktop and mobile was not just capable, it was actually a feature in the experience of these emails.
A single email had a unique experience depending on whether it was viewed day or night, on mobile or desktop, and would reveal unique layouts and even data depending on these variables.
