Daikin North America

Product Design · UX/UI Design · Information Architecture · Visual Design · Client Presentations · Design QA · Cross-functional Collaboration · Iterative Design · Figma · Freelance / Embedded Team Design

Timeline

5 Months

My Title

Sole Designer (Freelance)

Website

Daikin North America

Before

Daikin North America’s website was static, visually dated, and increasingly unreliable. Pages relied heavily on grainy imagery followed by dense paragraphs of text, with little visual hierarchy or engagement. Many links and pages were broken, often looping users back to the homepage or leading nowhere, making the site difficult to navigate and frustrating to use.

Just as importantly, the content lacked a clear audience. While it contained general information about Daikin and its initiatives, it did not effectively speak to its primary audience: North American regulators and policymakers. The site failed to clearly communicate Daikin’s leadership, regulatory compliance, and environmental commitments in a way that felt intentional, credible, or persuasive.

During an initial request to refresh the homepage, deeper structural issues with the existing build surfaced, rendering several sections unsalvageable. This prompted Daikin to ask HPL to fully redesign and modernize the North America site to better align with evolving corporate goals, regulatory needs, and brand perception in the U.S. market.

What I did

I joined the project as the sole product designer, embedded within a small team consisting of an HPL client manager, the head of design, and a single full-stack engineer. There was no budget, time, or access for formal user research or analytics (the existing analytics were not reliably configured), so best practices guided design decisions, Daikin’s robust brand guidelines, stakeholder feedback, and iterative refinement throughout the project.

Designed and explored multiple stylistic and color-based wireframe directions early on to help define a new visual direction.
Studied Daikin’s global brand guidelines in depth to identify where flexibility existed and where strict adherence was required.
Refined and evolved the site architecture as priorities became clearer, adapting the initial structure defined by HPL into what ultimately launched.
Influenced early content strategy by recommending what types of content should live where, while later adapting designs to significant content and legal revisions.
Worked closely with the engineer to QA designs, ensure feasibility, and maintain consistency across templates and components.
Led all design presentations, shared recommendations directly with the client, and created short walkthrough videos to explain changes when live meetings weren’t possible.
Helped adapt designs repeatedly as content expanded, shifted, or was rewritten late in the process.

This was a true full-stack design role, spanning UX, UI, content structure, visual strategy, and ongoing iteration.

Impact

Daikin has expressed satisfaction with the final site and has shared it internally and externally, including featuring it in product-related articles. The redesign has influenced broader marketing efforts, with other materials updated to align with the new site visually. Updates that previously took ages or never happened are now occurring weekly under an active maintenance agreement. Early performance indicators (such as increased engagement with on-site tours) suggest improvement over the previous site, despite the lack of reliable baseline data. Initial audience feedback has been positive, and continued data collection is underway to guide further refinements.