About UpLink

UpLink is the open innovation platform of the World Economic Forum that allows to surface early-stage entrepreneurs with the goal of accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals and enable an innovation ecosystem to drive positive systemic change for people and planet, by connecting them to investors, experts and partner organizations.

uplink.weforum.org

My role in the collaboration:

Platform UX UI design lead

Design team manager

Business strategy definition

Design system maintenance

Development support

Project team

1 PO, 4 Designers, 2 BAs, 10 Developers

My involvement in the project

Upon joining the project as the UX/UI design lead, I was involved in various work streams related to an existing platform. My primary responsibility was to oversee the design team and work with the product owner and business analysts to ensure ongoing alignment with platform design requirements. Additionally, I participated in discussions related to business strategy, with the goal of generating new ideas and value propositions. During this time, I also identified some confusion regarding the definition of the existing value proposition and how it was being communicated to the target personas. To address this, I collaborated with the marketing team to redefine the value proposition, which was not only crucial for me and the design team to have the right information to continue our UX UI design work, but also had an impact on the platform's overall communication strategy.

UpLink’s main functionality is to allow entrepreneurs to upload their innovative solution to fix a specific problem that is displayed as a “challenge” in the platform. By going through what we call “submission flow” the innovator can provide all the information that are necessary to allow the idea to be reviewed by experts. Our ongoing platform design improvements work consists in making this user journey, from challenge discovery, through solution submission, to winner announcement, and all different aspects around that, as easy and smooth as possible.

Maintaining an up-to-date design system and design screens on Figma is essential to uphold UX/UI quality and prevent wasted time during the development phase. Upon joining the project, I noted significant inconsistencies between the existing design system and Figma screens, and the actual developed product. Consequently, I invested substantial effort in securing design time to update the design system, produce new screens that accurately reflected the product, and propose tickets and user stories with improvement and enhancement requests aimed at elevating the design quality of the platform.

Business strategy

Assisting the leadership team in comprehending the development of new business ideas has been part of my role. Over the course of a year, a significant pilot project was initiated, commencing with a series of workshops with the team to generate a concept for a new value proposition. Subsequently, the target group was interviewed to validate this new concept. Following this, a proposal for a minimum viable product (MVP) featuring these new elements was designed, developed, and launched as part of a pilot phase.

During my involvement in the platform design improvements, I observed significant confusion among internal UpLink teams regarding the primary value proposition of UpLink. This presents a significant challenge, as a lack of shared understanding of the value proposition can adversely affect not only the platform's development but also the communication strategy and the services provided to the target personas. To address this issue, I coordinated a series of workshops and meetings aimed at aligning on the core value proposition and gaining insight into how to reduce general inconsistencies from both a platform and communication standpoint, while supporting the responsible people in enhancing the services offered to the target personas.