Helping university ideas become real projects

Powered by Politecnico di Milano

How can we promote the exchange of ideas, knowledge and skills to develop innovative and valuable projects?

Vision

A university in which students can feel part of a big family and a great community — believing and sharing their ideas, making investments, and building their future.

Positioning

We positioned our idea in a high-visibility scenario, useful to both the university and its students. We scraped and categorized all services available at Politecnico di Milano, then positioned our new service in a matrix to identify the gap.

Expert Interviews

We interviewed experts to develop and improve the key flows and functionalities of our service, and to understand more about the different parts of existing services.

PoliHub — an association that takes projects from Politecnico di Milano and works as a start-up accelerator. They were helpful in condensing our flow, giving more importance to the team than to the idea itself.

"The idea is worth nothing — its execution matters."

Switch to Product — a contest that promotes the most innovative ideas, also connected to Politecnico. They were helpful in assessing the criteria to consider when developing a new design for a future startup.

"IP asset and the scalability of the idea are crucial."

Filipari — an innovative fashion brand founded by two Politecnico students. The interview convinced us that including an existing startup in the process of recruiting new people could be interesting.

"It's brilliant to use students' energy to make the company grow."

Simona Cazzaniga — attorney at Sutti law firm in Milan, responsible for patents and the management of innovative ideas developed within the university. Talking to an attorney was key to better structuring the filtering phase and dividing merits and responsibilities.

"Designing the service lawfully is fundamental for its success."

System Flow

We created and refined the system flow many times. The final version is divided into 4 main phases: idea evaluation, legal confirmation, team creation, and project development.

User Experience

Translating our idea from system flow to information architecture, and then to wireframe, was not easy — but by consulting meaningful sources and experts we managed to get straight to the point. Simplicity, clarity, and functionality were the goals of our entire service.

User Interface

When we thought about Innovation Launcher, we wanted it to be a reliable and respectable platform — one immediately associated with PoliMi. One of the main challenges was to create a portal that is student-friendly but at the same time trustworthy for employers and external members. We translated this ambition into our user interface, keeping the look and feel of the platform relevant to the objective.

Hi-Fi Prototype

We designed our mockup in Figma and made it interactive with Protopie. To validate the platform we conducted an additional usability testing session — most users managed to complete the requested tasks without encountering any major problems.

Mobile App

The same design principles from the web platform were extended to a mobile app, ensuring students could engage with the platform on the go while maintaining the same trusted, polished experience.

Communication

Our communication is fresh in tone of voice, tailored to our well-defined audience. This allows direct communication, always respecting the university's guidelines.

Billboard inside the campus

The communication campaign included billboard placements inside the campus, as well as a series of social spots for LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

Commercials

We designed a small series of spots for socials — LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook — to create appealing content and to touch the target audience.

Promo video