Building the iTNT Digital Ecosystem from Scratch

To ensure iTNT’s platform addressed the needs of all key stakeholders in Tamil Nadu’s innovation ecosystem, we developed five detailed user personas. These guided our design decisions, helping us prioritise features, workflows, and content structure.

We translated each persona’s needs into actionable user stories, capturing their goals, challenges, and expected outcomes. This allowed us to design workflows and content paths that felt intuitive for all audience segments.

Using the Say / Think / Feel / Gain framework, we mapped user perspectives and emotions. This helped surface hidden frustrations and aspirations across five personas, shaping both functional and emotional design choices.

We charted stakeholders based on influence and interest, from government policy-makers to early-stage founders. This helped prioritize communication strategies and ensured each group’s needs were addressed at the right stage of development.

Insights from interviews, surveys, and workshops were clustered into themes, exposing shared challenges and opportunities. These clusters guided our feature roadmap and aligned the team on top priorities.

To reframe the challenges into opportunities, I used the "How Might We" approach. This helped in guiding brainstorming and keeping solutions user-focused:

• How might we create a single digital hub that connects startups, researchers, students, and government officials?
• How might we make program discovery and registration simple and seamless for all user groups?
• How might we increase awareness and engagement with iTNT’s initiatives?
• How might we provide administrators with tools to efficiently manage events, registrations, and content?
• How might we ensure the platform feels credible, modern, and trustworthy to all stakeholders?

Research insights were translated into a clear structural blueprint. The Information Architecture outlined how core modules fit together, ensuring intuitive navigation, logical grouping of content, and smooth program discovery for every user group.

The tree view drills into hierarchical relationships, clarifying how sub-pages group under each section and how users traverse to tasks like program application or event registration.

Key flows validated navigation logic and reduced friction across roles (student, researcher, startup, investor, admin). These ensured users could discover programs, register, and participate in events smoothly.

To ensure a cohesive and scalable interface, I established a design system including typography, color palettes, buttons, cards, and other UI components. This system maintained visual consistency across screens and supports efficient future updates.

Smooth transitions, hover effects, and subtle animated feedback cues guide users naturally through the platform. These microinteractions improved program discovery, helped users understand system responses, and made the overall experience more engaging.

User testing sessions and stakeholder reviews informed incremental improvements. I tracked usability issues, refined flows, and optimized content placement to ensure a seamless experience for startups, researchers, and internal admins.

Throughout the design sprints, we integrated usability testing to ensure the platform met user needs. Early prototypes were shared with stakeholders, uncovering navigation challenges and registration bottlenecks, particularly on mobile devices. Feedback from these sessions informed iterative improvements, keeping the product aligned with user expectations.

Once design elements were finalized, I prepared detailed specifications and asset packages for the development team. By running design and development in parallel, we accelerated delivery timelines and allowed future iterations to adapt seamlessly to early development insights or changing requirements.