Women in Design Deep Dive 2023 – Schedule
March 29-30, 2023
Chicago, IL
Wednesday, March 29 (Day 1)
Check-In & Morning Coffee
9:30-10:00am
Emcee Welcome Remarks
10:00-10:20am
Aziza Cyamani, University of Nebraska-Lincoln & Priyankaa Krishnan, Meta
Navigating Design Leadership with Courage and Passion
10:20-11:00am
Angela Williams, Museum of Science and Industry
Drawing from her vast experience as a designer, Angela will discuss her role working collaboratively across the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago as a creative leader. Attendees will gain insight into the unique opportunities and challenges of developing exhibitions from concept through execution to create inspiring, accessible and engaging stories and experiences.
As Director of Design and Creative Services, Angela will also talk about her approach to supporting and leading an internal creative team while meeting the Museum’s visual communication needs for the best guest experience.
Augmenting her professional practice, Angela’s commitment and engagement extends into the creative community. She is currently a board member of the Evanston Arts Council and co-chair of the Arts in Equity sub-committee. Serving as a founding member of Project Osmosis, a Chicago-based non-profit educational and mentoring initiative established to further design education for underserved minority youth, Williams continues to inspire the next generation of designers of color.
The audience will learn…
- The unique opportunities and challenges of developing accessible exhibitions
- How to inspire, support, and lead internal creative teams
- The joys of inspiring the next generation of creatives of color
Design Thinking as It Applies to Indigenous Communities
11:00-11:30am
Brittany Gene, Arizona State University
This session is a deep dive into understanding design thinking and how it translates into practice for Indigenous communities. There will be an examination of how Indigenous design exists in modern society. Topics within the session include creating opportunities for design within marginalized communities. Additionally, the session will discuss specific design projects and will highlight existing and emerging Native designers and resources.
The audience will learn. . .
- How to create design opportunities within marginalized communities.
- About emerging and existing Native designers. Link with info provided.
- Design thinking and how it exists for Native designers.
Building a Stronger Future for Women in Design: An Interactive Workshop
11:30-12:00pm
Elham Morshedzadeh, Ph.D., IDSA, University of Houston
What do you (individually or/and your institution) do to empower women and non-binary designers?
This is a question we should be asking ourselves – and one that will be answered with the tools and resources co-created during this session. This interactive workshop will be hosted by IDSA’s Women in Design Committee, featuring Lea Stewart, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, Priyankaa Krishnan, and Marcelle van Beusekom, moderated by Committee member Elham Morshedzadeh. The session’s goal is to create an accessible bank of resources and actionable items for designers who are interested in growing their equity skills. During the session, attendees will learn about the pros and cons of different methods for empowering equity.
The activity will focus on brainstorming future tools and strategies for empowering women and non-binary industrial designers. To create an interactive and experiential format, the workshop will involve a variety of activities and collaboration. Participants will explore the current state of equitable industrial design, identify potential gaps and opportunities, and explore existing effective strategies. This session provides designers with the opportunity to connect with professionals, reflect on their own roles, and learn how they can contribute to create an equitable and inclusive environment.
By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed a better understanding of the challenges and successes of different equity-related initiatives. Moreover, they will have created an actionable plan to incorporate equity into their own career trajectories and the industry at large. The Women in Design Committee hopes to empower designers to take ownership of promoting equity and inclusion in the field of industrial design.
Lunch
Designing the Future: Preparing Women for Successful Careers in Industrial Design
In this interview, Babette will share her insights on improving educational and career outcomes for women in industrial design, drawing from her vast experience as a product designer working in consultancies, multinational corporations, freelance work, strategic design consulting, entrepreneurship, and as an educator, department chair, and mentor. She will help attendees understand the unique challenges women experience in the design industry, so that they can develop and adjust their career paths accordingly. Attendees are encouraged to share their insights and perspectives, bringing their lived experiences to the table for this interactive session.
Babette will share her insights on how practitioners and educators can help young designers navigate their careers and move into leadership positions. Design practitioners, educators, and students alike can work together to ensure young designers are prepared for the competitive and ever-evolving design industry. Babette’s experience as both a practitioner and educator will guide attendees in forging successful careers. Through conversation and dialogue, attendees will gain valuable insights into the world of design, from both a practitioner and educator’s point-of-view. By the end of the session, students and early-career designers will be equipped with a range of strategies to ensure successful outcomes in their careers, while practitioners and educators will gain new insight into strategies for collaboration that can help young designers reach their full potential.
Career Topography: Mapping Your Path
1:00-1:50pm
In this interactive workshop, participants will visualize their career path, reflecting on their experiences. This includes degrees earned, positions held, influential mentors, turning points or roadblocks along the way, where they are now, and where they aspire to be. This workshop aims to find patterns and spark conversations among participants, and will be valuable for everyone from young, aspiring designers to well-established executives.
This workshop will conclude with a brief summary of ongoing research dedicated to growing diversity in industrial design by better understanding pathways into design careers. The presenters have been collecting and publishing demographic data focused specifically on industrial design educators. This work has suggested differences in how and where men and women are hired and retained in (industrial design) higher education.
Workshop outline:
- 5 min: Introduction
- 20 min: Visualizing individual career paths
- 30 min: Transfer individual paths to larger timeline (giant sheet of paper)
- 15 min: Debrief
Break
How to a Design A Workshop
2:00-2:40pm
Workshops can leverage the power of collaboration and help solve creative, business, and organizational problems rapidly and iteratively, by building empathy and facilitating innovation with the right set of tools.
Audra will review how to design and facilitate a creative workshop to apply to design projects and creative initiatives. With over 10 years of experience building and leading workshops, Audra has gathered a proprietary set of tools that she will share with the group. Participants will walk away with a toolbox of exercises to customize for their design needs, to facilitate a 1-hour long workshop to a more immersive 3-4-day workshop.
* A leave-behind of the “toolbox” of workshop exercises will be given to participants after the presentation for reference.
The audience will learn. . .
- To design and facilitate a design workshop within their own organization.
- Develop empathy and problem solve using a set of proprietary tools customized per their creative projects.
- Ignite creative thinking with cross-functional teams using strategic exercises to facilitate collaboration.
Beyond Ray Podcast
2:40-3:20pm
Beyond Ray Podcast welcomes Jillian Tackaberry of MNML to a special live episode for this year’s Women in Design Deep Dive. Beyond Ray will interview Jillian about her design career that began with student work and awards, and discuss how it has grown into a leadership role. Early on, she was driven to dig deeper than asked on projects, accelerating her capabilities and career. Jillian credits her capacity to stay engaged with every stage of the design process for her success and her approach to leading a team. Don’t miss this live candid conversation that gets to the core of the design career path and explores how women can thrive in the industrial design field.
The audiance will learn. . .
- How to cultivate their own type of leadership
- How to find drive and direction through a well-rounded creative lifestyle
- Methods of sharing work that build confidence and create opportunities
Building Highly Effective Design Teams through Inclusion of Diverse Perspectives
3:20-4:00pm
Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, IDSA, Interwoven Design Group
This talk will focus on how including diverse perspectives leads to successful and innovative design outcomes, and happier and healthier designers. The presentation will include case studies, product design examples and experiences from careers managing multi- and trans-disciplinary design teams for both large corporations and independent design consultancies. Attendees will learn how to attract, support and nurture a diverse design team and tricks to find designers that don’t fit into the “traditional product designer” box.
Day 1 Emcee Closing Remarks
4:00-4:15pm
Reception
4:15-5:30pm
Studio Tour @ Minimal
5:45-7:45pm
Chicago, IL 60607
Thursday, March 30 (Day 2)
Breakfast & Networking
9:00-10:00am
Emcee Welcome Remarks
10:00-10:20am
Aziza Cyamani, University of Nebraska-Lincoln & Priyankaa Krishnan, Meta
Designing for Inclusion
10:20-11:00am
Jasmine Orange, Ernst & Young
Have you ever felt like some designs are made to be exclusive? Not the cool, fun “exclusive”… the “you’re leaving people out” exclusive. From non-inclusive surveys about gender to not having baby stations in men’s bathrooms, there are many examples of products that just leave people out.
Our society, and the people in it, have biases. And because design is people-centric, it can also have biases. This talk will explore what biases in design look like and what the consequences can be when someone doesn’t recognize that bias can greatly change your design process and outcome: From lack of usability to even potential harm. Speakers will discuss how these exclusionary moments in design mentioned above are more common than we even realize. The session will also explore what happens when designers remove those biases and what great good can be done when designing for equity.
The audience will learn. . .
- Examples of what exclusive design looks like and the issues that bias brings to design work
- Examples of what inclusive design looks like and the good that it brings
- Ways to incorporate inclusion into their design teams and their work
Using Play at Work to Build Relationships and Alignment
11:00-11:40am
Katie-Gray Jackson, IDSA, Lenovo
This interactive session is about how Design Thinking and creative workshopping tools can invite playful energy into the office that will help designers grow their influence at work. Most Industrial Designers have experience with Design Thinking, but this workshop will explore its potential to strengthen relationships and enable alignment across organizations. The session will also walk through how a “Play + Design Thinking” formula can help democratize participation when collaborating at work. Attendees can expect to learn ways to create an environment for ideas and meritocracy to thrive while having fun in the process!
The audience will learn. . .
- Adaptable tools to host an inclusive, collaborative, and playful design workshop
- Tips and tricks for democratizing participation during creative collaboration
- How to design a creative workshop in order to arrive at a needed output or result
Emcee Closing Remarks
11:40-12:00pm
Aziza Cyamani, University of Nebraska-Lincoln & Priyankaa Krishnan, Meta