Circle Economy 's mission is to accelerate the practical and scalable implementation of the circular economy. To that end, they offer physical workshops in "ideation": ideation. But to truly scale their efforts, they were looking for an online platform that could mobilize a global community of cities, businesses and citizens to solve universal challenges circularly. To make this vision possible, we created Circle Lab in partnership with the World Economic Forum and eBay Foundation.
Creating a global source of circular knowledge
There are countless reports and successful cases around the concept of the circular economy. However, there was no digital place to make them available digitally. To this end, we created environment where anyone can explore this knowledge, a place to learn and be inspired. Users can easily search and filter the over 1,000 cases by strategy, impact area and industry to learn more about a specific approach to transition to circularity.
Accelerating collaborative innovation
Having created the ultimate, go-to source for circular economy knowledge, our next challenge was to create a framework that would streamline the process of collaborative innovation. Drawing on our own experience in collaborative ideation and development, we created a "workflow" initiated by the challenge initiator's briefing.
The first phase of building collaborative solutions begins with an Ideation phase in time where ideas can be contributed about possible improvements and comments can be made about potential risks.
In the subsequent Refinement phase, the initiator builds on the ideas provided, refining the contributions into concrete solutions and thereby providing feedback to the contributors.
Finally, in the Implementation Phase, the initiator will deploy the solutions and update the project contributors on the project's progress.
A stable and simple content experience...
In designing the brand and platform, we had to address two main challenges. The first was the amount of content users had to digest. To make the content easily digestible, we introduced a design inspired by news content sites. Using a serif font, reminiscent of a newspaper, we created a clear visual hierarchy on the platform that allows users to scan content and quickly determine its relevance.
... with a bold design personality
The second challenge was to design a platform visually different from its "mother" without losing all references to the renowned Circle Economy brand. Based on Circle Economy's slightly outdated styleguide, we created a modernized style for Circle Lab; a cool, bold and modern design. By using the same font and selecting two colors from their current palette, we were able to make a subtle stylistic reference to Circle Economy, but still maintain a strong brand personality.
Using the power of the crowd
Through engagement and education, Circle Lab's vibrant and diverse online community now offers new perspectives and unique solutions to the circular challenges facing cities, businesses and individuals around the world.