Before partnering with Krasamo, the client’s fireplace control application faced multiple critical challenges that hindered user satisfaction and increased operational costs. The user interface was unintuitive and outdated, leading to confusion and poor engagement. Key features, such as weather integration and control panel interactions, felt clunky and unpolished. Additionally, recurring costs from third-party weather APIs burdened the client’s budget, especially since the API needed to support regions like Australia and New Zealand as part of their global expansion.

Another major pain point was the user experience around remote fireplace control. The system used polling and long-polling methods that caused flickering in the UI. When users interacted with the controls, making multiple changes in quick succession, the interface would often revert to previous states due to outdated updates from the server. This not only undermined user confidence but made the app feel unreliable. Furthermore, an undismissable pop-up dialog appeared every time users entered the control screen, adding unnecessary friction to regular use.

The application also lacked localization features, such as the ability to specify the country for each fireplace “location.” This made weather data retrieval less accurate and failed to account for global users. Additionally, the electric fireplace product line required a separate, dedicated UI that did not match the brand consistency or experience of the rest of the app.

Krasamo stepped in to reimagine the user experience from the ground up. We began by redesigning the UI for both the gas and electric fireplace product lines, ensuring a modern and unified look while maintaining brand identity. Instead of merely patching legacy code, we rebuilt the visual components from scratch using Kotlin and XML, focusing on reusability and scalability. Legacy architecture and disorganized code were replaced with a structured, component-based design that could accommodate future updates with ease.

To address the flickering problem, we developed a time-based queuing mechanism. This system intelligently filtered long-polling responses by applying only the most recent update after a short delay. The result was a dramatic improvement in interface stability and responsiveness, particularly on Android devices. This solution ensured that the new UI not only looked better, but also behaved more predictably.

We also resolved the ongoing cost issue by replacing the expensive weather API with a free alternative from MET Norway. Although its documentation posed a challenge, the team carefully evaluated and implemented it to provide accurate and region-specific data, including coverage for the U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We added a new database field for storing the country associated with each fireplace location, enabling precise weather data retrieval. Lastly, we implemented a caching mechanism to store user preferences for pop-up dialogs, eliminating repetitive annoyances and creating a smoother control experience.