W-Collection is a family of products created to serve as Whirlpool's Global Design Language. I led the development of the conceptual phase with Brazil's team, developing the concepts till prototyping and testing them on user research.
We designed two different product lines, one with Integrated Handle and other with a Protruding Handle. Both collections are now going to market starting 2018, and the results are impressive: more than 12 Red Dots and 8 iF Design Awards were already owned by the design language we started visualizing back in 2014.
Final product designs are not mine, but the conceptual work developed by the team and me influenced the whole company, changing the company's visual identity and the way consumers perceive our brand globally.
These pages below show a bit of the early conceptual stages, where we were basically trying to identify what would be the character element and how to have consistency in such diverse environments and regions where we do business.
The strategy started gaining traction within the company when we decided to move with two different sets of handles: integrated and protruding. These options gave us the possibility to adapt the products to local specific needs, and also to leverage the global design all across the regions.
Whirlpool launched two versions of handles under the same umbrella. The experience with the products and the primary brand attributes remain the same, but the different executions allows us to be more flexible and reflect local consumer needs properly.
