R2R — designing the digital front door for a multi-stakeholder Right-to-Repair ecosystem

Context

R2R is a platform for the Right-to-Repair movement — the push to give consumers and independent repairers real access to the parts, documentation, and diagnostic tools that have historically been locked to manufacturers and their authorized networks. Rather than serving only one side of that argument, R2R positions itself as neutral infrastructure connecting everyone with a stake in the repair economy. I designed the product as a freelance engagement; the live site is the result.

The Problem

Ecosystem problem

The right-to-repair economy isn't missing participants — consumers, independent repairers, skilled technicians, training bodies, regulators, and manufacturers all already exist. What's missing is structure: no shared platform connects them, so relationships stay informal, undocumented, and hard to scale.

User problem

Each participant group has a different relationship to "repair" and a different reason to be on the platform — a consumer wants a fix, a technician wants work, a regulator wants oversight. A single generic entry point would serve none of them well.

Business/product problem

Without a clear model for how these six groups relate to each other and to the platform, the product risks becoming a directory rather than infrastructure — the goal is a system participants can be part of, not just a list they appear in.

Users & Stakeholders

R2R's own homepage names six ecosystem participants explicitly, each with a dedicated entry card — that structure is what defines the product's audience below.

My Role

This was a freelance product-design engagement. I designed the platform's information architecture and the ecosystem model that gives six participant groups — consumers, service providers, skilled workers, training institutions, government, and industry — their own entry point into one product. Team structure and delivery timeline aren't documented for this engagement, so this case study reasons from the shipped product and its own explicit ecosystem framing.

Constraints & Challenges

• Six distinct participant groups, one platform — the widest stakeholder spread of any project in this portfolio
• Neutral positioning as a design constraint — the platform explicitly can't read as "for consumers" or "for industry"; every layout decision had to avoid implying a side
• Abstract subject matter — "repair infrastructure" and "regulatory layers" are conceptual, not physical products, so diagram language had to carry more explanatory weight than usual
• Trust across an adversarial history — consumers and manufacturers have a historically tense relationship in this space; the product had to feel credible to both at once

Design Approach

R2R was not a single-user product. Six groups had a reason to enter the platform, and each group needed to understand where it belonged without making the other five audiences disappear.

I therefore treated the homepage as an orientation layer before treating it as a conversion page. Each participant gets a clear entry point, the visual treatment stays consistent, and the ecosystem diagram shows how those participants connect through the same infrastructure.

The first job of the interface is to make the model understandable. A visitor should be able to answer three questions before entering a specific workflow: What is R2R? Where do I fit? What does this platform connect? That sequence shaped the hierarchy more than any individual visual treatment.

Key Design Decisions

Information Architecture — Three Connected Layers

Three layers structure the platform: a Repair Marketplace where consumers and service providers transact, a Data Registry / Verification layer for documentation and trust, and a Regulatory Oversight layer for the compliance relationship. Each of the six participant groups connects into this structure from its own dedicated entry point rather than through one shared generic funnel.

Stakeholder Collaboration

Six groups have to see themselves in this product for it to work. Consumers need a repair path outside the authorized network; Service Providers and Skilled Workers need visibility and a channel to reach consumers, treated as two distinct participant types rather than folded into one; Training Institutions need to be positioned as part of the pipeline rather than an afterthought; Government needs a visible regulatory relationship rather than an unregulated-sounding marketplace; Industry needs a seat at the table instead of being cast as the opposition. The equally-weighted entry cards and the labeled Regulatory Oversight layer are how the interface answers each of those needs at once, without any one group's requirements crowding out the rest.

Final Solution

The story the homepage tells, section by section, in scroll order.

Outcome

Verified outcomes

R2R is live and shipped — usage and adoption figures by stakeholder group aren't available to me for this engagement.

Design impact — qualitative

• Six stakeholder groups get equal visual and structural weight instead of an implied hierarchy
• An abstract "infrastructure" concept is made legible through a single diagram rather than paragraphs of explanation
• The regulatory relationship is stated explicitly, rather than left for institutional visitors to infer or assume is absent

Reflection

What I'd improve next: I'd want to test whether all six entry paths get discovered equally, or whether the more familiar categories (Consumers, Service Providers) crowd out attention for less obvious ones (Training Institutions, Government) — that's a hierarchy question worth validating with real usage data, which this engagement didn't include.