The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2024
LG Menopause Mode: smartwatch detects hot flashes and the air conditioner cools the room
LG links a smartwatch, a phone and the Dual Inverter air conditioner so a night hot flash triggers a breeze — no getting up, no waking.
LG Electronics
What it had to solve
By 2025, over a billion women across the world will be postmenopausal, yet few alternatives exist to relieve the most common symptom of this period: hot flashes that strike at night.
How it works
By 2025, over a billion women across the world will be postmenopausal, and the most common symptom of this period — hot flashes — still has few alternatives for relief. The flashes typically strike at night and wake a woman again and again.
LG's answer, Menopause Mode, is not another pill or supplement but a connection between devices she may already have: a smartwatch, a mobile phone and the LG Dual Inverter air conditioner. For the first time the three work together — the app detects a hot flash and releases a refreshing breeze into the room.
The woman does not need to get up or even wake up to adjust anything: the air conditioner responds on its own. The idea reframes an appliance as a quiet caregiver for a stage of life technology had largely ignored, and it is preserved in the D&AD awards archive as LG product work.
Why it lands
- The problem is enormous and poorly served — over a billion postmenopausal women and few options for their most common symptom — so the idea meets a real need, not a niche.
- It uses hardware already in the home; the innovation is the sensing loop between watch, phone and air conditioner, not a new gadget to buy.
- The response happens automatically in the middle of the night, exactly when a hot flash is most disruptive and a woman is least able to act.
- By making the appliance the actor, LG turns a product feature into a story about care that the brand can own.
What it did
A home appliance became a direct response to a symptom that affects over a billion women: the system feels the flash and answers with cool air while she stays asleep. The product idea is preserved in the D&AD awards archive as LG work.
What you can take
When a huge need has no product answer, add a sensing loop to something already in the room: the smartwatch feels the symptom, the appliance answers it.
Since then
The D&AD archive entry records the concept and credits but no launch figures, so the case stands on the idea itself: the first integration of a smartwatch, a phone and the LG Dual Inverter air conditioner to answer night hot flashes. It treats a stage of life shared by over a billion women as a design problem rather than a taboo, and shows how a connected home can react to a body's signals instead of waiting for a command.
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