2026
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KONE - Built to Flow
Public website renewal
Design statement
KONE has been a global leader in elevators and escalators since 1910, Dedicated to People Flow™ and moving 2 billion people every day.
In line with the new “Rise” strategy and a customer-centric vision, KONE needed to rethink and redesign its website, with the ambition of setting a new benchmark for B2B digital experiences. Imagine the effortless ease of stepping onto an escalator or into an elevator — instinctive, and fluid. That’s the experience we wanted to replicate in the new website.
The concept for the website comes to life through a core element, the “adaptive dock” — enabling fluid navigation.
Adaptive experiences will transform how people interact with digital interfaces, and with brands. As artificial intelligence becomes an integral part of interface design, it won’t just enhance navigation; it will redefine the entire interaction model.
People accustomed to deeply personalized and fluid experiences will see static interfaces as outdated. Innovation is no longer just about advancing technology — it’s about creating fundamentally better, future-ready user experiences and interfaces.
The website concept embodies this vision, a seamless, intelligent UX and UI that guides and supports users at every stage of their journey, delivering a holistic digital experience that extends across all KONE touchpoints — far beyond the website itself.
Working across business lines and core industry pages, we shaped content to support the main user journeys — focusing on relevance, clarity, and simplicity at every step. Content structure, language, and hierarchy were intentionally designed to help users understand the opportunities available to them and support confident decision‑making as they continue their journey with KONE, ensuring the experience flows seamlessly across the website.
From Strategy to Experience
The design process
1. The team used internal AI-powered research tools to conduct frontline analysis and research, generating a range of hypotheses that we subsequently validated with KONE business partners.
2. We developed a range of synthetic personas representing different types of KONE customers. These personas enabled us to explore diverse scenarios and prototype user journeys, forming a strong foundation for our concept.
3. Additionally, we conducted extensive interviews with stakeholders and business partners to thoroughly validate our findings and approach.
4. Using insights from research, interviews, and user journeys for each user type (consumers, users, trade, and industry), we started creating concepts and wireframes.
5. We defined our experience north-star, and started shaping the experience design layer, deciding how the new website should look and feel and how the KONE brand brand should be experienced across digital channels (with focus on the website).
6. Early prototyping enabled us to test our concept and design direction with key stakeholders.
7. To audit and validate our designs, we leveraged internal AI-powered UX research tools.
8. Finally, we delivered the complete prototype and documented the work within both the KONE Flow Design System and a Digital Brand Experience playbook, which also serves as a gateway to the four key prototypes.
9. This 3 month process was characterised by close collaboration, with ongoing engagement from both the client and the development team to gather feedback, validate the concept, and test ideas.
User Journeys
We created a set of synthetic personas representing different global regions (business frontlines) and genders to explore diverse scenarios and build user journeys. Each journey aligns with a distinct user segment — consumers, users, trade, and industry.
User example: Non-professional, Jean-Pierre
Jean-Pierre Leclerc is a committed board member of a housing association in a historic 5-floor building in France. With an engineering background, he is dedicated to preserving the building's charm while addressing modern challenges.
Recently, Jean-Pierre has been troubled by the noisy and potentially unsafe elevator, seeking cost-effective solutions to ensure its smooth and secure operation for all residents.
We designed a tailored journey for Jean-Pierre that caters to his needs.
Form
The KONE brand and its “Flow Design System” form the foundation for the design work. Together, they elevate the brand experience across digital spaces.
Guided by the KONE experience drivers — Sense of Flow, Life, and Trust — we crafted a seamless, engaging, and dynamic digital experience that not only fulfils functional needs but also elevates the KONE brand.
The concept comes to life through a core element, the “adaptive dock” — enabling fluid navigation. The dock is your adaptive navigational helper and co-pilot — seamlessly guiding you from the moment you arrive on the website, offering a personalised journey tailored to your needs.
Function
The “adaptive dock” delivers effortless guidance, personalised support — adaptive to every business line. Its conversational interface offers tailored insights from the moment users arrive on the KONE website.
The concept goes beyond the boundaries of the website, aligning with a vision of how people will interact with digital interfaces in the future: cross screens, within virtual or synthetic realities, and in physical spaces.
Data-driven visuals, draw from KONE’s connected network to deliver precise information, elevate the brand, and build trust. A monospaced version of the KONE Information font was created to be used in data-visuals.
Differentiation
People accustomed to deeply personalised and fluid experiences will see static interfaces as outdated.
Innovation is no longer just about advancing technology — it’s about creating fundamentally better, future-ready user experiences and interfaces.
The website concept embodies this vision — a seamless, intelligent UX and UI that guides and supports users at every stage of their journey, delivering a holistic digital experience that extends across all KONE touchpoints — far beyond the website itself.
Sustainability
KONE’s ambition is to lead the industry – also in sustainability.
The website experience is designed to help users reduce environmental impact in several ways: enabling a switch from light mode to dark mode, pausing videos by default so users choose whether to play them, and incorporating coded animations with a custom embedded font for infographics. Together, these features help minimise energy consumption.
The adaptive dock will guide users toward sustainable, environmentally friendly solutions tailored to their needs. AI agents will recommend best practices, while the website content reinforces KONE’s sustainability message.
Digital experience preview
The foundation for KONE’s future-ready digital experience. Through living examples, it sets the stage for how KONE connects with people in an increasingly digital world.
Note: The new KONE website is currently live only in pilot markets (such as the USA), and not all features have been deployed yet (such as the "Adaptive Dock"). For a preview of the full experience, please visit the second page of the case study (link above) and explore the four use-case prototypes from there.
