Designing Design Week

What kind of “music” can we make together? 

Designers and non-designers from across the company spent three days focused on teamwork and harmony to learn, grow, practice, play, bond, and do some good for others.

DW-Wrap-2
Design Week 2018 broke records.
Some were vinyl and some were just outcome metrics.

 

OUR GOAL

Create the most engaging and rewarding design team event ever. Provide attendees the chance to grow their design knowledge and skills, learn from creators and educators from outside the company, recognize each other's contributions and accomplishments, and give back to the local community using our unique capabilities.

MY ROLE

Lead the effort to craft and host the three-day event from concept to completion. Source and secure internal and external thought leaders, makers, and educators. Design activities to help a nationally-recognized performing arts high school address their real-world challenges. Design and present new individual and team awards. And facilitate live panel discussions.

It started with a simple question:

What would be best for the team?

The top priority was to create the event around the team's needs and goals.

Previous Design Week highlights
Highlights from previous Design Week events
Team notes on what to keep or build on
Team notes on what to keep and build on
Icon-Idea-Strategy-120

I used the team's input to develop a creative and content strategy. Then I went divergent in thinking, exploring themes and brainstorming ideas to form cohesive concepts…

2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.002.jpeg.002
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.008
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.009
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.010
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.011
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.013
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.014
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.016
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.015
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.018
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.019
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.020
2018-DesignWeek-Ideas.021
DW-agenda

Time to divide and conquer. Sherri focused on event logistics, food, and budget. J.B. took ownership of swag. And I started to source and coordinate internal and external speakers, develop marketing collateral, research ideas for team activities, and craft the visual design and presentation materials needed for a seamless attendee experience.

I developed a bold and expressive look and feel aligned with the creative strategy. From this visual design language, we started crafting marketing communications, “sales” decks to share with potential stakeholders and speakers, and resource libraries for everyone creating content. With a clear creative direction established, the presentations would be compelling and coordinated.

– LESSON LEARNED –

Create visual assets early as possible in the process to share with production partners. These creative elements helped speakers and event planners understand what the event was going to look and feel like, and how best to make independent, informed and timely decisions.

Creative theme and art direction
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.002
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.009
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.006
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.010
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.007

Next, we needed to identify and persuade external speakers to share their journeys to inform and inspire the team.

We looked for talented professionals who could provide a unique point of view, impart valuable learnings and lessons, tell great stories – all while (hopefully) tailoring their message around customer-obsession and event themes.

We hypothesized that musicians share many similarities to designers, working through the process of going broad, narrowing, testing and learning to arrive at solutions that meet a diverse set of goals or needs.

Fortunately, through a salty combination of perseverance and luck, we found and convinced several amazing people to take part in Design Week.

– ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED –

Finding the right speakers takes a lot of time and energy, but when it works out, compelling presenters can deliver the desired attendee experience like nothing else.

DesignWeek-Poster-1-sm
DesignWeek-Poster-2-sm
DesignWeek-Poster-3-sm

Our approach for giving back to our community during the event was to maximize our time and talents together, helping Steve address two big, important problems he faces at work. Attendees could select either problem to focus on and we broke up into groups. We spent the next 6 hours rapidly learning, defining, ideating, experimenting, and iterating.

The next day, each team presented their thoughts, ideas, and experiments back to Steve.

DW-IdealState
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.022
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.021
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.023
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.024

The team did amazing work. They empathized. They collaborated. And they practiced our design process with remarkable enthusiasm.

Steve was impressed. He left the event with new perspectives, clear and actionable next steps, and a lot more than he planned for.

DesignWeek-2018-Recap.025-3

The team responded positively, too, with the highest satisfaction scores ever.

DesignWeek-2018-Recap.031-1
DesignWeek-2018-Recap.031-2

This week rocked.

And this team rocked! It was a great show. In addition to what worked well, we also collected feedback on how to make the next one even better.

Based on the hits from this event and new ideas and themes on cross-functional partnership, the 2019 Design Week event did not disappoint. Event organizers raised the bar again by building upon successes and learning from the previous year, transforming the event atmosphere and inviting a fresh mix of phenomenal internal and external speakers to inform and inspire the team, push our design capabilities further, and cultivate a stronger growth environment.

I'm proud of what we accomplished and forever grateful for the opportunity to lead and learn.

Portfolio

Intuit Pro Tax Brand & IdentityBrand Identity Design

Magnolia Audio and VideoMarketing and Experience Design

North Star Vision ConceptsProduct UX Design

Agency Project WorkCreative Direction and Design

Experiments and PrototypesExperience Design and Research

Connect with me

icon-envelope