Client
Jazwares
Services
Product strategy
UX and platform design
Participation architecture
Visual design and brand
Cross-functional development leadership
Role
Creative Director
Visual Designer
Product Manager
Agency
Spark* Creative Group
Overview
Jazwares wanted a way to bring fan creativity directly into its product pipeline. The idea was straightforward: let fans submit toy concepts, let the community engage with them, and let the strongest ideas advance toward development. The design problem was harder. How do you build a platform where quality rises rather than volume? I led product strategy, UX, and cross-functional execution for Jazwings — defining and shipping the platform in under six months. Several concepts advanced to development.
The Challenge
Jazwares had a genuine strategic opportunity: its fan base was creative and engaged, and the company had no direct way to tap that. But a crowdsourcing platform only works if the right ideas surface. Without a deliberate participation structure, you get noise — high volume, low quality, and a community that loses interest when nothing moves forward. The platform needed to feel fun enough to draw people in and rigorous enough to produce ideas worth developing.
The Approach
I started with the participation architecture. The core design question was: how does a strong idea prove itself? I built a staged progression system — voting, community support, Jazwares review — so each idea had to earn its way forward rather than simply accumulate clicks. That structure also gave submitters transparency. They could see exactly where their idea stood and what it needed to advance.
From there I led UX design and visual design, building an experience that felt accessible to fans rather than clinical. The onboarding had to make submission feel easy. The idea pages had to make community engagement feel meaningful. And the progress meter had to make the whole pipeline feel real — not a suggestion box, but an actual path to market.
I also managed the cross-functional development team through build and launch, working with front-end and back-end developers to ship on time without cutting the parts that made the platform work.
The Results
Jazwings launched in under six months and quickly gained traction with idea submissions and community participation. Several concepts advanced to development — which is the metric that matters, because it proved the participation architecture worked. Jazwares walked away with a direct pipeline from fan creativity to market-ready product, and a model for how to run community-driven innovation going forward.
Kudos to my team
Front-end Developers, Edson Daquinta & Rachid Boukrim and back-end developers, Yves Reginald Jean-Mary & Pedro Vazquez
