Illumine

Empowering security with AI

Role

Product design owner – UI/UX, design assets, patterns.

Timeframe
Summer 2018 - Jan 2019 (~6 months).

Platforms
Web (responsive).

Tools
Sketch, Photoshop, Illustrator, pen & paper.

In 2018, leadership at Sportsrocket conceived a new product to empower security professionals by seamlessly integrating cameras, notifications, and machine learning into a unified platform—saving time and making everyone safer.

This product was built as a functional beta before the company dissolved in early 2019.

See every event from a single dashboard

My main goal was to make it easier for users to monitor their camera feeds. While AI handled identification, users still needed to manually verify the footage. The biggest requirement was to keep every camera visible at all times so that nothing was missed. In design terms: cameras could not drop below the fold.

This required a much more structured approach to designing the dashboard layout. After some debate, I landed on a fixed grid with a set number of camera panels. To balance this rigidity, users could easily customize their dashboard format.

The basic structure was settled fairly early in the process.

Dashboards are the main working space for users, combining a fixed grid of cameras with a notification feed.

Customization

In my initial wireframes, users could freely add as many cameras as they wanted to a dashboard. Once we moved to a fixed grid layout, I had to rethink that approach. Now, users had to choose the grid size first, then add cameras to fit within it. This shift led our team to the idea of "panels." Each panel could hold multiple cameras and would automatically cycle through them at set intervals. This idea prompted a completely new editing flow to support the updated functionality.

Early wireframes lacked the flexibility of panels.

Example of editing panels for a dashboard.

Multiple devices can be added to a panel, set to cycle every X seconds.

Finding specific cameras

Potential customers might have dozens of cameras on a single street. As such, they needed a quick way to find specific cameras. To solve for this, I designed a simple set of inline filters and search, allowing users to quickly narrow down their devices.

It was also vital to consider future expansion beyond just cameras. This expanded view included filters for multiple device types.

Grid view. Devices are added and managed muck like videos in our CMS.

List view with example of a user sorting and filtering devices.

Visual style

Since this was a brand-new product, we aimed to establish a bold, modern identity from the start. I led the design of the logo, branding, and core visual patterns. To reduce eye strain during long sessions, I chose a palette of cool, muted tones that also aligned with industry standards. Working alongside our senior designer, I helped build a shared asset library to ensure visual consistency and make it easy for others to apply the same style. All icons were custom-designed, and UI patterns were built as dynamic symbols in Sketch for efficient reuse.

Creating the logo

I was asked to design the product logo, originally inspired by a name referencing the Illuminati. While the prompt was playful, I approached it thoughtfully.

For my portfolio, I’ve renamed the product “Illumine”—a word that means to illuminate or shed light—which better reflects the product’s purpose.

My early sketches drew from themes like eyesight, lenses, and the Eye of Horus to represent an intelligent system casting light on its surroundings. Ultimately, I aimed to create a logo that looked clean, professional, and scalable. To achieve this, I stripped away unnecessary references, enforcing a minimalist and modern mark.

Final brand identity

The final identity conveys a sense of stability and vision, centered around an intelligent core. The color palette and typography were designed to align seamlessly with the product’s interface guidelines. I created multiple size and color variations to ensure clarity across the UI and adaptability for other mediums like emails and letterheads. Overall, feedback was very positive—company leadership described the design as original, innovative, and a strong reflection of the product’s purpose.

Retrospective

This was one of the most comprehensive projects I’ve worked on—designing a full SaaS product from the ground up, starting with only a name and some early team insights. It pushed me to collaborate closely with colleagues to plan, design, and validate every feature from scratch. While we developed a working prototype, the company unfortunately ran out of funding before we could bring it to market.

If I had more time, I would have loved to explore the user journey beyond crime detection—specifically, what actions users would take next and how the app could support those critical moments.