Designing community-driven features that turned 13% of B2B users into active ambassadors sharing expertise with their peers
Role
Product Strategy, Product Discovery, User Research, Workshop Facilitation, Interaction Design, Prototyping, Design System, A/B Testing, iOS/Android App
Client & Sector
ManoMano
E-Commerce, BtoB
Team
1 Product Designer (my role)
2 Product Managers, 6 Developers
Duration
8 Months
Overview
The Context
When I joined ManoMano's B2B mobile team, the company had already established itself as one of Europe's leading DIY marketplaces. While the platform successfully connected professionals with products, the experience remained largely transactional. It was pivotal moment in the company's evolution: beyond an e-commerce app, I worked on establishing the foundations for future community initiatives. Within a SAFe framework alongside two product owners and a dedicated development team, I introduced scalable interaction patterns and reusable system components across the B2B ecosystem.
10+
Years in business
50 M+
Unique visitors on the platform per month
900+
Employees across 6 European countries
The Challenges
The B2B app faced several interconnected challenges that required thoughtful design thinking: fragmented Design Systems, understanding our professional users and building community from scratch.
First Challenge:
Fragmented Design Systems
With mobile and web design systems operating independently, and multiple teams contributing to the web system, maintaining consistency while allowing for platform-specific innovation was an ongoing tension. Every design decision required careful consideration of how it would translate across platforms and align with specifications being developed by other teams.
Approach & Solutions:
Design System Contributions
I developed cohesive component specifications and a consistent visual language that bridged the gap between mobile and web experiences, ensuring our community features felt native to the app while maintaining brand coherence.
Approach & Solutions:
Crafting Delight
Beyond functional requirements, I designed thoughtful micro-interactions that brought joy and surprise to the user experience, transforming routine interactions into moments that reinforced the sense of community we were building.
Second Challenge:
Building Community From Scratch
Through market analysis, I observed successful brands building communities by starting small, nurturing motivated ambassadors, encouraging healthy competition, and involving their audience meaningfully at every stage.
The Problem
How might we foster a genuine sense of community within a transactional platform?
Approach & Solutions:
User Research & Insights
Through surveys and app tracking analysis, I uncovered promising patterns in our professional user base.
13,1%
of users identified as highly engaged potential ambassadors, willing to contribute more than three times weekly
Shared Expertise
Professionals actively shared expertise with colleagues, validating our hypothesis about spontaneous knowledge-sharing
Genuine Engagement
Users demonstrated strong emotional investment, being equally likely to share negative experiences
Approach & Solutions:
Structured Discovery
Applying the Discovery Discipline framework, I broke down the challenge into manageable stages with clear deliverables. I facilitated Worst Idea Workshops to surface and reframes problems, helping the team align on the core questions we needed to answer before designing solutions.
Conclusion
By combining qualitative research, structured frameworks, and thoughtful interaction design, I laid the foundation for community features that respected our users' time while encouraging meaningful contribution. Working as the sole designer on the B2B app team taught me the importance of building bridges: between design systems, between teams, and ultimately, between the users themselves. The success of these features demonstrated that even in transactional B2B contexts, there's real appetite for connection and knowledge-sharing when the design makes it effortless and rewarding.