Design Methods

Loving the Discovery

Throughout my career, I love to surround myself with ways to progress design thinking wherever I’m at. There’s a thrill to learning new ways that people think, solve problems, and learn. Below, you’ll find a few ways that I’ve lived into that process from co-creating a design discovery game to leading Tech Talks to mentoring students. It’s a blast taking design beyond the everyday and instead looking for ways that design can impact people for the better.

Design Kitchen

The more I work with people, the more I realize how design discussions should never be limited to designers. The role of design is to help be a conduit for strong ideas across the organization to thrive. Design Kitchen is a direct response to this. One of my coworkers and I developed a board game in which anyone across the organization can join and share insights while having a blast in doing so.

How it works

The power of design kitchen is its versatility. We’ve used it to gather insights within Cart and Checkout, Conversational UI, and even Car E-commerce! Each player is given a task and a character to play as. They fulfill their tasks by talking to “Kody” a smart e-commerce device played by another player who has their own goals and restrictions. A player once tried to request a robot to do their shopping for them while feeding them cheeseballs and we used that to learn more about hospitality and our recommendation engine for the shopping experience. It ends up being a whacky great time and deep insights are gained - especially in the follow up debriefing session.

An introductory video we have playing in the background before we started our "Wheels Edition" game.

Ask me about how this tool informed some of our projects!

Tech Talks

Being in a company that is in the process of transforming its design culture has its perks. One of them is that there are ample opportunities to educate stakeholders and future designers around design thinking. Here are a few of the talks I’ve given recently!

Demystifying Design Sprints

A brief look into the shared journey a team makes running a design sprint within Kohl's.
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No two journeys are the same and the experience of going through a design sprint can seem daunting. However, we aim to share some of the insights we personally have gained from going through this process and how our team has changed to be stronger as a result.

A Day in Balanced Teams

My balanced team when I was on the Marketplace initiative sharing our experiences as members of one of Kohl’s Technology’s first balanced teams.

Design Templates

As our design teams continue to grow, it’s important to make sure everyone has access to the same tools within their teams. As our team at Kohl’s started to grow, I joined a team to build out traditional design templates for tools that teams often lean into, not to prescribe a design process to them, but rather to empower them within their day-to-day roles.

Design Newsletter

Most people across the broad organization of Kohl’s weren’t used to hearing from design and seeing the ways that design impacts our organization in very tangible ways. I partnered with three other team members and we created a newsletter to evangelize the great things happening within design at our company. Below are some elements we have incorporated in the last few issues that I’ve direclty help contribute.

Volunteering

Outside of work, I also love to partner with local community initiatives to spread what I’m learning in design. I’ve had the pleasure of partnering with Design for America, interns, and prospective designers. Below are a couple ways I’ve tried to give back most recently.

Design for America

Design for America is an idea incubator, a way of approaching complex challenges, and a life-long community of learners. They strive to shape the next generation of social innovators. As such, they often hold regular conferences for up and coming designers and often need mentors to come in and help provide guidance as design challenges are conducted. Partnering with them is an absolute blast and I can only hope that they learn half as much as I learn from them.

Intern Mentorship

I know what it’s like to be taking my first steps in the world of design. It can be intimidating and frightful and there can be a lot of questions like “Am I cut out for this?” “How do I make my voice heard?” “How do I know when to use different design tools?” “How do I build greater confidence as a designer?” All of these things and more have been things that I’ve struggled with and so it’s so important to me to help others going through their own individual design journeys. Below is a presentation I gave to some interns within our organization that were trying to learn more about design.