Designing for Suppliers
This case study showcase the 0-1 product initiatives, going from conceptualisation to delivery in order to demonstrate strategic impact of the Supplier user in Podium platform, contributed to securing $5M in Series A funding from Schindler.
Challenges & goals
One of the podium's vision is to enable DfMA by connecting suitable supplier products to project designs in real time and empower data driven decision making. In order to realise this vision, we wanted to implement a unified platform that equips suppliers to future-proof products, gain real-time insights, and actively shape project design options together with architects and engineers, an end-to-end development collaboration where the future of design and procurement converges.
Outcomes
Supplier Portal - Designed a space for Suppliers, allowing to onboard to the platform, import and showcase their products, see real insights on their products.
Product Catalogue - Designed a product catalogue for architects to browse and seek various product information required in designing a building model.
Component Selector - Designed a tool that allows the designers and engineers to test products in their model directly allowing to view products contextually
My role
As part of the Supplier squad, I work with a product manager, a computation designer as part of product team, in collaboration with engineering team. My responsibilities are
End-to-end design and feature delivery
Drive discovery and research: user interviews, personas, journey maps
Deliver high-quality design outputs: development-ready screens, detailed interactions, and visual design aligned with design standards
Partner with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to define product roadmaps and prioritise features from a UX perspective
Establishing the basics
In order to involved Supplier users to the Podium ecosystem, they needed a way to onboard, manage their company information and upload the product data. Essentially, we are building a content management system for build environment, supplier and manufacturers.
This foundation step come with it's own constraints. With no design resources and no room for deep-dive user research, I turned to proven UX pattern from Shopify and other leading e-commerce platforms to accelerate design and maintain a high standard of usability.
Forms and layouts were built on Podium's Design System. Since initial design system was mostly for the 3D scenes, I had to extend the design system to accommodate different inputs, form layouts and tables components.
Focused on designing clean and accessible forms for company details, product uploads and listing management.
Considered on scalability, ensuring that the foundation could support the future capabilities like analytics and integration with design tools.
Although this stage involved what I often called “the boring stuff,” it was critical groundwork.
Listing view vs Form view
Designing the Supplier Portal
From data entry to experience
Early supplier engagements revealed that the value proposition that our product could stand out would be go beyond of uploading their product data. Suppliers wanted to see how their products performed in the market, how often the products were viewed, specified, or tested by architects.
This insight guided us to include the followings in the portal
Introduced visual dashboards showing real-time analytics on product visibility and usage.
Designed an intuitive product management interface where suppliers could update product specifications and manage product variants.
Applied progressive disclosure principles — allowing new users to focus on essential setup tasks first, while advanced users could access deeper tools and integrations later.
These improvements reframed the portal from a static CMS to an active business tool that gave suppliers visibility and control over their participation in ongoing projects.
Connecting to the bigger picture
With the Product Catalogue in place, the next challenge was to connect these supplier data and product information to the architects and engineers's workflow, enabling for them to discover, test and specify the products inside their building models. This integration became the foundation for Component Selector, a tool that bridged the gap the between supply and design in real time.
Challenge
Traditionally, product data from individual suppliers lives in isolated catalogues or static PDFs, disconnected from the actual design environment. How can we bring this activity to the upstream in the building development process, so that we can close the gap between supply and design?
Goals
Architects could search, filter, and compare supplier components based on design criteria.
Engineers could preview product behavior in 3D, understanding spatial fit and performance early in the design phase.
Suppliers gained contextual visibility, seeing how and where their products were used in real projects.
This created a feedback loop where data flowed both ways: design decisions informed suppliers, and supplier data informed design choices.
Designing for contextual interaction
The core UX challenge was to expose these complex data to the users and make them feel seamless, intuitive and easy to explore.
Designed a "side-panel interface" that allowed users to explore products without leaving the context user is in
Integrated product preview so designers could evaluate materials, geometry and parameters visually
Results and impact
This integration closed the loop on Podium’s vision of data-driven design collaboration. By bringing suppliers into the design process, Podium transformed procurement from a downstream activity into a strategic, co-creative part of design.
Balancing functionality and scalability
Every design decision was made with scalability in mind. The portal had to serve suppliers of different sizes from small niche manufacturers to global brands like Schindler.
To achieve this:
I created modular interface components that could flex between simple and advanced configurations.
Established consistent design patterns for forms, tables, and data visualisations using the Podium Design System.
Collaborated closely with engineers to ensure that even complex data structures (e.g. nested product variants or parametric properties) remained accessible through simple, familiar interactions.
Impact
The Supplier Portal became one of the most significant milestones in the product’s journey not only enabling supplier participation but also demonstrating the business value of Podium’s ecosystem. By allowing suppliers to connect product data directly to project designs, the platform unlocked new network effects that contributed to Podium’s $5M Series A funding by Schindler.
Reflection & learnings
Designing for suppliers was one of the most complex yet rewarding parts of Podium’s journey. The project demanded balancing business needs, technical feasibility, and user value all under navigating the ambiguity, designing based on hypothesis and resource constraints.
Designing without full clarity
Working from hypotheses rather than full research was a humbling challenge. It taught me to embrace uncertainty and iterate quickly, using mockups and internal feedback to validate early ideas. By borrowing proven mental models from platforms like Shopify, I learned how to apply familiar design patterns in new, industry-specific contexts to reduce cognitive load and speed up adoption.
Collaboration as a strategy
As the sole designer driving this track, close collaboration with engineers and product managers became critical. Instead of perfecting designs in isolation, I co-created solutions with the engineering team, using their technical insights to shape design decisions that were not only feasible but scalable. This cross-functional approach built trust and momentum, helping the team ship faster and more confidently.
Building for the long game
Beyond the individual features such as onboarding, portal, and component selector, the real success was establishing a design foundation that could scale. The systems and patterns created during this phase became reusable assets for future features, accelerating subsequent feature development.
In hindsight, this project was less about individual UI screens and more about creating alignment between design, business, and technology. It demonstrated how thoughtful design can influence not just user experience, but also investor confidence and strategic direction.