Workshop and Volunteer Facilitation
As a UX designer I enjoy finding time to share my skills with others!
As a designer in the field, I’m passionate about growing my community and sharing my skills. I do this by participating in various small scale volunteer opportunities. This page is dedicated to some of those events where I helped facilitate OOUX workshops, judge design slams or help lead groups of young designers through a design systems thinking activity.
William Tennant Highschool
In April, Think Co employees hosted the William Tennant High School Studio Lab class for a presentation, studio tour and design thinking activity. Together we talked about our career paths and daily work life at Think.
“thank you for spending the time out of your busy schedules to host a fun interactive experience with us rather than working on your important projects. It was an amazing experience for me as I got to learn more about the career path I want to go into, in the future. The activity was cool too! I managed to learn a lot about the process of developing creative solutions and it was nice change of pace working as a team in the comfy office. Thank you! (P.S. It was cool seeing your cats)”
-Student, William T High
Images from the Event
We led a design thinking workshop for students to help familiarize them with the process and provide them with an opportunity to develop their design skills in an environment that more closely matches the real world (as opposed to a school environment). Myself, along with 3 other designers developed a workshop that would allow students to practice skills such as user observation, problem definition, brainstorming and solutioning, and presenting. We got the most adorable and kind thank you letters from the students <3
Event Details
PhillyCHI 17th Annual Design Slam
In May of 2023 I was asked to be a Juror for PhillyCHI’s 17th Annual Design Slam. We worked with the non-profit group Mighty Writers and formed a team of 5 jurors.
The Slam Challenge
For this year’s design slam, participants were broken up into 10 groups and needed to develop a product for Mighty Writers that would grow their student base. The product needed to be accessible to users who had low literacy rates, are non-english speaking, and be digital and analog compatible. Our 10 groups had 60 minutes to design an idea and then each group got 5mins of presentation and 3 for Q&A.
Mighty Writers offers free year-round writing programs for nearly 3,000 Philadelphia kids at six sites throughout the city (and one in Camden, NJ) with help from 400 volunteers. Programs include daily after-school academies, themed writing workshops, mentorships, a teen scholars program, college essay writing courses and toddler programs across all sites.
Mighty Writers
Images from the Event
MICA Professional Development
For the Fall and Spring semesters of 2022-23 I spoke at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) Professional Development seminar class. I talked with students about my own experiences as an artist and a designer, and how I’ve shaped and grown my career path.
