Deloitte: Designing and Connecting the Bersin HR Marketing Platform

Project summary

Following the success of the HR E-Reader (Deloitte Bersin: Research and a Record-Setting HR E-Reader), the next step was to bring the Bersin platform fully into Deloitte's digital ecosystem. The goal was a unified experience that matched Deloitte's brand and design standards, turned static HR content into something interactive and accessible, and connected three experiences that had grown apart: the marketing site, the partner advertising funnel and the subscription experience for enterprise customers. As Head of Product Design & Research, I led UX design, research and the creative direction.

Creative direction

Creative direction was pivotal to adoption across Deloitte's wider customer base. The work aligned the Bersin marketing site with Deloitte's Human Capital division by defining the product's tone, visual style and customer goals, so the platform felt approachable to prospective customers and partners while staying unmistakably Deloitte.

My responsibilities included:

• UX and UI vision, and alignment with the design system
• Qualitative research, wireframing and prototyping
• Creative direction for marketing, partner engagement and content distribution

A design system for long reading sessions

Integration required a robust design system aligned with the Human Capital division. Beyond visual consistency, it had to support people who spend long stretches reading. The team widened gutter margins and reworked the 12-column flex grid to improve cognitive readability, so users could work comfortably through reports of 30 to 200 pages without overload. The platform was built to scale to the full report library while keeping the interface simple, and analytics showed an average time on site of 3.5 hours.

Integrated information architecture

A comprehensive IA audit replaced outdated elements, including a new direct messaging system, and set clear boundaries between three experiences:

• The marketing website for prospective customers
• The partner advertising funnel for solution providers
• The subscription experience for more than 300 enterprise subscribers

Clear boundaries made navigation easier, and better linking between the external marketing site and the internal SaaS applications kept customers moving toward relevant research instead of dead ends.

Engagement-driven features

• An educational calendar. A multi-category calendar gives access to rich media, including HR podcasts, webinars and events.
• Oversized search. A modern search pattern with oversized type helps tired eyes find relevant content quickly across 32 categories of HR research.
• Dynamic content. Educational content is delivered with video and audio, and a CMS gives authors flexibility for articles, events and customer engagement experiences.
• Mobile-first and responsive. The platform adapts across devices for more than 36,000 reports, with improved grid spacing and readability.

Turning a thought leader's audience into customers

Josh Bersin, a leading voice in the HR industry, published podcasts on scheduled topics throughout the year, and his social media presence (Twitter at the time) sat at the top of the engagement funnel. The platform aggregated his media and tied it to scheduled HR events and content, which created a steady path for new readers to become Bersin by Deloitte customers.

Results

The integration delivered a cohesive experience that balanced modern UX with enterprise functionality and preserved Deloitte's brand integrity, and the platform became a benchmark for Deloitte's digital transformation efforts. The program also supported a projected revenue path from $20M to $250M (1150% growth) on top of a $1.3B revenue stream in HR consulting for the Human Capital division.

Skills: Creative Direction, Marketing UX, Information Architecture, Design Systems, Content Strategy, UX Research.