Context
Intel.com's navigation had grown organically over time. The result was a cluttered mega menu accumulating outdated products and categories without following design system standards. Different business units had added their own priorities over the years, creating confusion for customers trying to find products, support or solutions.
Role & Scope
Role: Senior Product Designer, Design Systems Lead for Digital Experiences at Intel
Platform: Web (responsive), global navigation for Intel.com
Collaboration: Product owners, business stakeholders, engineering, localization teams
I owned the end-to-end design of the mega menu navigation redesign. This included user research, information architecture, visual design, stakeholder collaboration and development handoff.
Design Constraints
Inconsistent design standards: The old navigation didn't follow grid system, Atomic Design System principles or font ramp. This created visual inconsistency across the site.
Outdated content architecture: The navigation included many products and business areas no longer offered or strategic priorities for Intel.
Poor language support: The geo location selector offered language options that weren't fully supported across the site. This created frustrating dead ends for international users.
Fragmented user experiences: The signed-in experience didn't surface user entitlements effectively. Customers had to hunt for account features, inbox and support resources.
My Approach
Action-Driven Discovery
Analyzed site analytics to understand where users were struggling. Conducted card sorting exercises and user testing to validate proposed structure. One of the hardest parts was working with stakeholders across business units to determine which products to remove and which solutions to prioritize.
Conversation as Guided Navigation
Created clear information architecture organized into six primary categories. Products, Support, Solutions, Developers, Partners and Intel Foundry Services. This structure reflected both user mental models and business priorities.x
Design System Integration
Started with low-fidelity wireframes to test structure and hierarchy. Built every component using Atomic Design System. This ensured visual consistency across the entire site and seamless responsive experiences from desktop to mobile.
Enhanced User Experiences
Improved the signed-in experience so authenticated users could instantly access entitlements, inbox, events, support and subscriptions. Streamlined the geo/language selector to show only fully-supported languages.
Detailed Results
45% improvement in findability across Intel.com navigation paths.
Deployed globally across 12 languages with consistent user experience.
Complete Atomic Design System integration ensuring visual consistency site-wide.
WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance with full keyboard and screen reader support.
Successfully removed legacy products while surfacing current strategic offerings like Intel Foundry Services.
Established governance model preventing future content bloat and maintaining navigation quality.
Key Takeaways for the Future
Stakeholder alignment is design work. Some of the hardest parts weren't about pixels. They were about facilitating difficult conversations about which products to remove and which solutions to prioritize.
Let users guide the structure. Card sorting and user testing were invaluable. What made sense internally didn't always match how users thought about Intel's products.
Design systems enable speed and consistency. Having Atomic Design System in place meant we could focus on information architecture rather than reinventing visual components.
Less is more in navigation. One of the most impactful decisions was what we removed. Cutting legacy products and unsupported language options made the navigation clearer and more trustworthy.
Global considerations from day one. Designing for a multilingual, international audience taught me to think about localization, RTL languages and regional differences much earlier in the process.
When systems break, teams slow down.
I work across UX, architecture and content to prevent fragmentation and help organizations move faster with confidence.