Design competition for SocialChallenges.eu

Running a design competition to transform a research result into a commercial platform product.

In 2017 I architected and managed the build of socialchallenges.eu by a developer I recruited and mentored for META Ventures to manage their IT department. It was funded by an EC research project to investigate if and how challenge-based innovation could help cities solve social challenges.

Unfortunately, design was the responsibility of another member of the project consortium, so while the website worked well it looked terrible.

The project ended in mid 2019. It was very successful, so META Ventures decided to commercialise the website engine as META Innovation Platform, with which organisations can launch their own challenge-based innovation platform.

But as the largest example of a commercial Platform, socialchallenges.eu needed a better look. Hence the design competition I ran on 99designs:

A few months later, the website was relaunched. The new design cost a fraction of what the EC paid the research consortium partner for the original design, and looks a million times better.