HP Graphics

I joined HP Graphics as a Business Designer to explore new product opportunities within the event printing industry.

Rather than improving existing workflows, the objective was to identify entirely new sources of customer demand through product innovation.

Unlike traditional product design, there was no predefined solution. The work focused on identifying market opportunities, validating concepts and helping product teams decide which ideas deserved further investment.

The project started with a high level of uncertainty.

Understanding HP's internal ecosystem, product portfolio and strategic priorities required significant onboarding before meaningful discovery could begin.

My first concepts explored several adjacent opportunities around print automation. Although these ideas demonstrated technical feasibility, they failed to align with the strategic objective.

That became an important lesson. A technically interesting product is not necessarily a strategically valuable one.

After several iterations I shifted the focus away from workflow automation and toward business outcomes.

Instead of asking: How can we simplify printing? the question became: How can we help companies make better decisions about participating in industry events?

That change completely transformed the direction of the project.

To validate the concept, I conducted qualitative interviews with:

• small print service providers
• small businesses regularly participating in B2B events

The interviews focused on understanding how companies selected events, measured success and evaluated return on investment.

Rather than treating events as isolated marketing activities, participants consistently described them as long-term business investments.

This insight became the foundation of the product concept.

The resulting concept evolved into an event intelligence platform rather than a traditional printing solution.

The platform helped businesses:

• discover relevant industry events
• estimate potential business value
• compare participation opportunities
• evaluate expected ROI before committing resources

Future iterations explored integrations with professional networking platforms, website analytics and event engagement signals to improve post-event evaluation.

The objective was not simply to recommend events, but to help businesses understand why a particular event matched their commercial goals.

Research confirmed that businesses were interested in a decision-support tool rather than another event directory.

Participants wanted confidence that attending an event would generate measurable business value, whether through sales, partnerships, networking or lead generation.

Based on interview findings, the concept was simplified into an MVP centered around event discovery and ROI estimation.

Reducing the scope made the value proposition significantly clearer.

The concept successfully passed early-stage validation and was presented to the internal product organization for further evaluation.

At the conclusion of the engagement, HP continued assessing whether the concept should evolve as an independent product or become part of the company's broader enterprise ecosystem.

This project reinforced several important lessons about enterprise innovation.

Ideas should not be evaluated solely by their technical creativity. The strongest concepts emerge when business strategy, customer problems and measurable value intersect.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway was learning when to abandon an idea. Several early concepts were discarded, not because they were poorly designed, but because they solved problems that were less important than the company's strategic objective.

That willingness to pivot ultimately led to a concept supported by both user research and business validation.