Problem

Most fortune 500 companies face a common problem: they are too big and disjointed to communicate openly. An employee could have a good idea, but without the right connections in the company that idea has no chance of flourishing. As one of the largest auto manufactures in the nation, my client was facing this issue headon by developing their one digital product to aggregate ideas. The only problem was their approach was off; they didn't understand how their employees wanted to submit ideas or why. Their tool quickly became a comment box for everything from cafeteria food suggestions to engine part designs.

Strategy

Looking at this problem from the outside it seemed pretty daunting. I needed to design a tool that allowed users to not only come up with great ideas, but submit them with complete detail and then turn them into actionable directions for an engineering team. Thankfully I had access to the end user base, so I wasn't just approaching this from the outside in.  

My approach was to start by understanding the users and how they would want to interact with a tool like this. I would then distill the users motivations into feature requirements and develop an information architecture for the tool. From there I could develop interaction and visual designs for the tool.

Ideation

Launch Pad makes the idea submission process simple by guiding users through the important things to consider. The system will check the database for similar ideas to avoid duplicate ideas in the system. Ideas are tagged by department to sort and organize the database. Idea creators are encouraged to attach documentation to help explain their idea. 

Evaluate Ideas

Ideas in the system are evaluated based on customer appeal, marketability, and technical feasibility. A metrics system was developed to evaluate each idea based on the same criteria in order to score and rank ideas on a consistent scale. Evaluators are provided a simple form to help them evaluate the ideas. 

Solution

After developing a strong understanding of the user, the system architecture and interaction models were established. Wireframes were created for each screen based on site maps and interaction models. Working with developers and prototyping tools, I helped create prototypes that were used in 3 rounds of user testing. From there, the interactions were finalized and a visual system was created and applied to wireframes. 

In order for the development team to build Launch Pad, functional specifications were created to document design decisions and system requirements. 

The final product included a complex set of functionality that were simplified to provide the best user experience. A tool like this can help an organization not only collect ideas, but also evaluate them in a systematic way to ensure the best ones show up on the production line.