From relay to road trip: eliminating ego and fostering cross-discipline collaboration
What if we viewed projects less as a baton pass between disciplines and more like a team road trip? The concept of road tripping envisions collaborators riding along together, switching drivers as the project progresses. While one discipline drives, the passengers stay engaged to support and contribute ideas. After all, what is a road trip without a trusty co-pilot to D.J., open snacks and help navigate along the journey?
At WillowTree this analogy has completely changed our approach to cross-discipline collaboration. We’ll talk about how our organization is working to establish a culture that empowers all disciplines to feel confident co-designing. We’ll also explore techniques and share examples around eliminating ego, gaining trust, encouraging vulnerability, and aligning on a singular vision for a project's destination.
4/21 6:50–7:20pm UTC
Shifting team culture
A look at how teams shift from a culture of “my ideas” to “our ideas,” and why bringing more people into the design process moves the work forward.
Explore more tracks:
Wednesday, April 21st
4:50pm UTC
Kriss Chaumont
Senior Lead Designer at NBC News Digital
Ethan Byun
Interaction Designer at NBC News Digital
Natalie Kuehn
Product Designer at NBC News Digital
Uniting for cross-platform storytelling: Elections at NBC News
Live election coverage is a huge opportunity for NBC News and MSNBC to deliver fast, accurate results across television graphics, interactive boards, websites, mobile apps and social media. In previous election cycles, design collaboration has been limited as teams operated separately with unique design systems and tools. As audiences have shifted to watching the election unfold not just on-air but across a variety of platforms, we saw an opportunity to unite and make sure we delivered what our audience needed, where they needed it, all using a common language.
4/21 4:50–5:20pm UTC
5:30pm UTC
Collaborative creativity
Collaborative creativity is a theory that tries to describe why working together in the open can feel so magical and why it thrives best in environments where people can not only share their ideas early and often but where people are encouraged to *create* in the same spaces together.
Shifting team culture
By Figma
4/21 5:30–6:00pm UTC
5:30pm UTC
Thinking through your thinking: Designing the VITAL Ventilator with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wanted to help the country and the world through innovation, space technology, and engineering. Kat Park shares how engineers leveraged the skills of design and illustration to think through their thinking, and facilitate rapid development in a remote environment.
Shifting team culture
Design systems
4/21 5:30–6:00pm UTC
5:30pm UTC
Design bitcoin for everyone
Christoph and Johns, contributors to the Bitcoin Design Guide, explore the idea of open design, to bring more designers into the space, and to help open-source projects adopt better design processes.
Shifting team culture
Developers
4/21 5:30–6:00pm UTC
6:10pm UTC
Even by design
By shifting power from designers to users, we start to correct for designers' biases and blindspots, especially if they don't have lived experience with the issue they are trying to solve. By doing so, we also start to change to the design process to be more equitable, inclusive, and reflective of diverse voices.
In this session, we’ll hear stories about imbalances with the design process and how they affected outcomes, reflect on moments of discomfort we have had with our power as designers, and explore tools (both personal and team based) we can start implementing in our work to correct for our biases/blindspots and start shifting power to users.
4/21 6:10–6:40pm UTC
6:50pm UTC
From relay to road trip: eliminating ego and fostering cross-discipline collaboration
What if we viewed projects less as a baton pass between disciplines and more like a team road trip? The concept of road tripping envisions collaborators riding along together, switching drivers as the project progresses. While one discipline drives, the passengers stay engaged to support and contribute ideas. After all, what is a road trip without a trusty co-pilot to D.J., open snacks and help navigate along the journey?
4/21 6:50–7:20pm UTC
7:30pm UTC
Everything is not fine (and that's okay)
There’s so much going on all around us and it has been that way for over a year now. Nothing we’ve experienced is “normal times” or “business as usual” and I think it’s about time that we admit that, if we haven’t already, especially at work.
4/21 7:30–8:00pm UTC
Thursday, April 22nd
4:50pm UTC
Confessions of a flawed designer
Reflections on overcoming ego and apathy and what Pablo has learned along the way.
Shifting team culture
Culture
4/22 4:50–5:20pm UTC
5:30pm UTC
Neby Teklu
Staff UX Researcher, Education @ Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Michelle Molitor
Executive Director at The Equity Lab
Race and recess: Design tools for reducing inequities
Racism and inequity in education are products of design, thus, they can be redesigned. And since more than half of US K-12 classrooms have a computer for every student, tech can be a catalyst for this change when used responsibly. However, it requires making tweaks to our traditional human-centered-design methods. We’ll share a set of tools from the Equity Lab on how to add a racial conscious lens when designing for any industry — while having some fun along the way.
4/22 5:30–6:00pm UTC
5:30pm UTC
Hitting Ctrl+N: How to work through a design breakup
In this talk, Shanique will share how she learned to let go of her design darlings, get comfortable sharing scrappy explorations, and discover the lessons that come from failures.
Shifting team culture
Culture
4/22 5:30–6:00pm UTC
6:10pm UTC
The universal challenges of every scaling design team
In this talk, he’ll share his first-level experience of a team going from small to large in a very small timeframe and include findings from other designers. Whether you’re an individual contributor or a people manager, this talk will share the top problems scaling design teams face, how you can anticipate them, and be prepared to face them.
Shifting team culture
Culture
4/22 6:10–6:40pm UTC