Cricut Heat mobile app
A companion app for Cricut Heat Presses that takes the guesswork out of making professional-looking Iron-on and Infusible Ink projects.
The Cricut Heat App & the EasyPress 3 are Amazing!
I absolutely love my new EasyPress 3 and the new Cricut Heat app! I love that the app takes out all the guesswork. It sends the information to the EP3 and walks you through every part of the process. The EP3 and the app make it easy for even inexperienced crafters to make awesome projects.
5-star EP3 Product Review
Game Changer!
This, by far, is one of the most creative and fun heat presses out there! The ease of use and the coordinating Heat App (which I absolutely LOVE) take all the guesswork out of pressing — no matter what HTV material you are using! It's so much fun to use and the finished product comes out beautiful.
5-star Hat Press Product Review
I love the EasyPress for its portability and ease of use. Add to that Bluetooth capability with the new Heat app and now I have the same great function plus step-by-step instructions at my fingertips. I consider myself an intermediate-level crafter, so imagine my surprise when I used the Heat app and realized how many steps I was skipping. This will save me so much time and many materials.
5-star EP3 Product Review
PROBLEM
In addition to Cutting Machines for crafting, Cricut also makes a line of Heat Presses. The problem? Unlike cutting machines, the heat presses were not connected and did not require registration, so Cricut was not collecting any data on usage. Cricut also hosted a web-based Heat Guide — time & temp settings based on material and substrate — but this did not require sign-in, was not instrumented for data capture, and was expensive to manually update and maintain. When Cricut was planning a new line of Bluetooth-enabled Heat Presses, I was tasked with designing a companion software user experience that would handle activation, registration, and firmware updates. Oh — and also deliver guidance for Iron-on and Infusible Ink transfers that was superior to the online Heat Guide.
PROCESS
The project initially had an extremely tight timeline — only a few months from conception to release. This constraint meant there was no time for early user testing, so I relied on Product Experts, Member Care call logs, discussions with Materials and Hardware Product Managers, collaboration with Industrial Designers, analysis of competitive products, and direct experience with designing and making heat transfer projects to inform the early designs.
I worked closely with the same Visual Designer as on the Cricut Joy app. As project timelines were adjusted, we were eventually able to user test early design prototypes and app iterations with working hardware prototypes.
DESIGN
With the recently released Cricut Joy app as a model, we leveraged its step-by-step guidance framework and visual language to rapidly design new user workflows for heat presses. The designs needed to be extensible to possible future hardware iterations — e.g., presses with no hard buttons, or presses that had optional control pods, or presses with more material & substrate variables to specify — as well as be able to support older, non-bluetooth models (or what I affectionately call "dumb presses").
THE DETAILS
Designs and specifications for the Heat app included the following:
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Splash screen and video
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Sign In / Create Account
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Support for Bluetooth-enabled EasyPress 3 and Hat Press
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Set Up – product Registration and Activation via Bluetooth
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Step-by-step practice project to foster user confidence
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Firmware Update
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Recommended time and temperature settings for all heat transfer material and substrate combinations
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List of items needed for each heat transfer project
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Easy machine connection
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Step-by-step guidance with video renderings and built-in timers
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Option to view detailed written instructions
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Care instructions
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Ability to set custom time & temp
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Quick access to last 3 settings used
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Saved presets
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Heat press user manuals
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Contextual links to educational and help articles
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App Settings
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Error states and empty states
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Future states: integrated Shop and project inspiration
TEAM
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1 UX Designer (Me)
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1 Visual Designer
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1 Content Strategist / Copywriter
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1 Product Manager
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~6 iOS and Android Developers + QA
REFINE & RELEASE
As hardware launch dates shifted, we had time to run user tests with both new and experienced crafters. Based on feedback from those tests, we adjusted the designs as such:
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Removed detailed written instructions from the Project Overview so users would follow the onscreen step-by-step instructions
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Replaced all static step illustrations with dynamic video renderings
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Finessed the copy and terminology for clarity
Again, due to shifting timelines, we had to prepare to launch the MVP app with support for either EasyPress 3, or Hat Press, or both. In the end, we released both new heat presses and the Heat app for iOS and Android concurrently.
Fun fact: I named the app!
