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Case Study

Digital Marketplace

An enterprise innovation marketplace that made it easier for employees to discover initiatives, contribute ideas, and connect those ideas to business value.

View the process See impact
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Product names, data, screenshots, and identifying business details shown here are anonymized or represented as placeholders.

My RoleLead Product Designer

Team: Product, front-end & back-end engineering, content, and 3 designers

Responsibilities: End-to-end design, stakeholder alignment, system definition, and design direction

ScopeEnterprise innovation marketplace supporting discovery, idea submission, learning, and collaboration.
FocusIdea intake, business value framing, navigation, responsive design, and scalable marketplace patterns.
OutcomeA clearer path for employees to participate in innovation and connect ideas to business impact.
The Challenge

The marketplace needed to turn innovation from something employees read about into something they could participate in.

Employees needed a clearer way to discover initiatives, submit ideas, describe potential value, and understand how to engage with digital innovation across the enterprise.

What needed to change

The experience needed to shift from a static innovation destination into an active ecosystem: one that invited employees to participate, guided them through idea submission, and helped teams understand the potential business value behind each idea.

  • Innovation content and opportunities were difficult to understand at a glance.
  • Employees needed clearer entry points for submitting and browsing ideas.
  • Business value, ownership, and follow-through were not always visible in the experience.
Process Walkthrough

From static portal to participatory marketplace experience.

The work focused on clarifying user intent, creating stronger pathways for idea submission, and designing reusable patterns for discovery, education, collaboration, and business value storytelling.

Understand how employees engage with innovation.

I looked at the full journey from awareness to participation: how employees discover initiatives, learn what innovation means in context, and submit ideas with enough detail to be actionable.

  • Identified friction across awareness, browsing, idea submission, and follow-up.
  • Mapped user needs across discovery, learning, collaboration, and business value framing.
  • Reviewed content structure and navigation opportunities to make the ecosystem easier to understand.
DiscoverUnderstand innovation opportunities and current initiatives.
LearnGet context and guidance before submitting an idea.
SubmitDescribe the idea, problem, audience, and business value.
ConnectEngage with teams who can review, shape, or move the idea forward.

Define the marketplace as an innovation participation system.

The experience needed to support both sides of the ecosystem: employees contributing ideas and teams evaluating, shaping, and advancing those ideas.

  • Defined core content types for ideas, initiatives, learning resources, and collaboration paths.
  • Prioritized clear navigation across Home, Innovate, Learn, and Connect.
  • Established submission patterns that captured both the idea and the business value it could provide.
Innovation Contributor
Needs clarity, encouragement, and a clear path to submit
  • Understand what types of ideas are useful.
  • Explain the problem, opportunity, and business value clearly.
  • Know what happens after an idea is submitted.

Create scalable patterns for innovation discovery and participation.

I translated the marketplace strategy into reusable UI patterns that helped employees browse ideas, learn about initiatives, and submit opportunities with clearer business context.

  • Designed homepage and mobile patterns that encouraged participation.
  • Created submission flows that prompted users to describe the idea and potential value.
  • Connected discovery, learning, and collaboration paths into a more cohesive ecosystem.

Deliver an innovation marketplace foundation designed to scale.

The final direction created a clearer experience for employees and a stronger structure for teams managing ideas, content, and enterprise innovation initiatives.

  • Partnered across product, engineering, and stakeholders to support implementation.
  • Aligned UI patterns with enterprise design standards and accessibility expectations.
  • Created a scalable foundation for future ideas, initiatives, content, and collaboration workflows.
Key Decisions

Design choices that made innovation easier to understand, submit, and act on.

1

Structured entry points by intent

Home, Innovate, Learn, and Connect gave users clearer paths based on what they came to do.

2

Made idea submission more actionable

The submission experience encouraged users to explain the opportunity and business value behind each idea.

3

Connected inspiration to participation

The experience moved users from learning and browsing into submitting, sharing, or connecting with others.

4

Designed for enterprise scale

The system supported new ideas, content, stakeholders, and governance needs over time.

Impact

Improved innovation participation, clarity, and platform scalability.

Details are described in a confidentiality-safe way while still showing the business and user value of the work.

✓

Clearer innovation discovery

Employees could more easily understand initiatives, opportunities, and ways to participate.

✓

Stronger idea submissions

Submission prompts helped users connect ideas to potential value and clearer next steps.

✓

Better ecosystem alignment

The experience connected innovation content, learning, collaboration, and submission workflows.

✓

Scalable foundation

The experience created a stronger structure for growth across future marketplace needs.

The Digital Marketplace turned innovation into a more accessible, participatory enterprise experience.

By improving navigation, idea submission, business value framing, and responsive interaction patterns, the experience helped employees move from awareness to action while giving the platform a stronger foundation for future growth.