Creating Routines for Roombas
- Laura Tramontozzi
- Apr 17
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 10
Roomba users need an intuitive way to set up and manage cleaning routines in the Roomba Home app. Routine Builder, a key feature of the revamped 2025 experience, is designed to align with users' cleaning habits, offering a balanced mix of smart suggestions and manual controls — making Roomba a true partner in home maintenance.
Role: Principal Product Designer, iRobot
Team: Led UX vision on a cross functional feature team including design, product, development & engineering leadership
Tools: Figma, Usertesting.com
Skills: Research (User Interviews, Prototype testing), Wireframing, Prototyping, Presenting, Prioritizing subfeatures, Design Systemming
Deliverables: Key MVP feature in Roomba Home 1.0
CONTEXT
In 2025, iRobot launched a new line of robots, requiring a complete software overhaul. This gave our team the opportunity to create a new app experience, building on insights from the classic app and leveraging the advanced capabilities of the 2025 models.
With a clean slate, we were able to complete the shift from a robot-centered to a home-centered experience focused on users' cleaning habits, and build on the intelligent features introduced the previous year.
As the central feature in the new Roomba app, it is critical for the Routine Builder to both reflect this shift and incorporate key usability insights in order to deliver users a seamless cleaning experience.
CONCEPT VALIDATION
To kick this feature off, I created some rough, map-based wires based off of prior research and competitive analysis. We put these in front of users, as well as engineers, to gather some early feedback and guide design explorations going forward.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
"Don't make me jump through hoops
just to vacuum my kitchen."
— Said one user summing up the entire study
Prioritize starting to clean from the map — Though a challenge for engineering, selection on the main map was the most intuitive for all users.
Set up should focus on room selection — Most users think about where to clean first, how second. Most didn’t show interest in engaging with room order or cleaning preferences at all.
Cleaning profiles offer enough control — Of the users who engaged with preferences, most were satisfied with cleaning profiles (eg: “deep clean”) – only one explored advanced options.
Recommendations were well received — Recommendations resonated with users, though most did not want recommendations forced on or preselected for them.
CHALLENGE
How might we provide users with a seamless path to a clean home, while offering varying levels of control, intelligence and automation?
UX APPROACH
I made some changes to my initial concepts to simplify the path to starting a cleaning routine. I incorporated routine builder fully into the home tab presenting users a single, interactive map.
By putting routine details in a drawer separate from the map, I could simplify the list/map view UI. I separated cleaning preferences from the initial view, uncluttering the experience for users who don't care about them, while keeping them intuitive to find for users who do.
This drawer/map pairing also allowed me to simplify the map/list view interaction into something more familiar - users are accustomed to this pairing from other popular apps.
UX REFINEMENTS
Clarify the Quick Start Sub Feature
Quick Start was designed as a one-tap entry point to preconfigured routines—ranging from recent routines to smart suggestions like “Clean the dirty rooms.”
In the classic app, actually starting Smart Clean routine can be done with a single tap. We considered expanding this streamlined approach to Smart Clean, as well as other prebuilt routines in the new app, and explored multiple variations of this feature.
User testing revealed a strong preference for transparency — nearly all users wanted the ability to preview a routine before the robot began cleaning, rather than having it start immediately without insight into the plan.
Users consistently favored seeing suggested routines without having any preselected by default. The feedback was clear: most users preferred making their own choices, rather than having the app assume their intent.
Simplify decisions about how to clean
In the classic experience, room-by-room cleaning preferences became overwhelming as advanced options continued to expand with new robot models.
In the new experience, we introduced the concept of cleaning profiles: groups of preselected cleaning settings for specific goals, like deep clean. The Smart profile — where users can rely on their robot to intelligently apply preferences to each room based on dirt history, room type, household profile, among other factors — tested very well.
Most users preferred applying a profile to an entire routine, while room-specific and user-created profiles added more confusion than value.
Usability Improvements
The classic app's list-based routines were clunky, and lacked visual context, especially for users who didn’t customize room names. Our early concept testing showed that, without a doubt, the map is the most intuitive entry point for users to clean.
In the new app, we prioritized the interactive map and paired it with an optional list view for easier routine visualization. We also improved the list view’s usability substantially by introducing more modern drag-and-drop functionality to the list, for smoother, more intuitive editing.
UX SOLUTION
Here are the same flows shown in the original example, incorporating the new drawer/map paradigm and the refinements discussed above.
Importantly, in these new designs, users can tap the main map itself to open routine builder, and choose rooms to clean directly:
INTRODUCING: ROUTINE BUILDER
Routine Builder, a key feature of the new Roomba Home app, allows users to intuitively set up cleaning routines and maintain their floors with ease.
The simplest way to clean
Users can create a cleaning routine by simply selecting or deselecting rooms on the map and tapping start or schedule for later.
Go-to routines at your fingertips
Users can tap a Quick Start card to instantly start or schedule a prebuilt, recommended, or recent routine. Designed for convenience, this feature allows users to repeat routines with a single tap.
Edit routine details with ease
Routine details offers a dynamic list view with familiar interactions for greater control over cleaning routines, including adding or deleting rooms, editing room order & access to room-specific cleaning preferences.
Cleaning preferences, simplified
Cleaning preferences are grouped in predefined preferences that let users easily select a type of cleaning (e.g., deep clean) for the entire routine without adjusting advanced or per room settings.
For the more hands-off user, Smart preferences tells the Roomba to automatically determine the best cleaning method for each room based on factors like dirt history, room type, and household profile.
Maximum control when you need it
For maximum control, users can edit settings like water level or suction power for each individual room by updating advanced cleaning preferences.
Take cleaning off the to-do list
In addition to starting a routine in the moment, users may schedule cleaning routines to occur either on a weekly basis at a given time or when they leave their home (simple location based automation).*
*This is MVP functionality and will be built out to include more flexibility and automation triggers as we dive into the automation work post MVP.
Spot Clean in the moment messes
Users can spot clean easily from the main map to clean up quick in the moment messes by creating an ephemeral zone to be cleaned.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Having just released 1.0 to users early this year, we are focused on gathering feedback, and incorporating key improvements from alpha and beta testers - including both feature enhancements as well as known usability improvements.
Our goal is to continuously improve the Roomba Home app, ensuring it effectively supports users in their pursuit of a cleaner, more comfortable living space.
Stay tuned.
