Interning with DFA National

OVERVIEW——

I had the pleasure of spending my summer of 2019 in Chicago, IL interning at the Design For America (DFA) National office headquartered at Northwestern University's Segal Design Institute. As the Chief Welcome Experience Intern, I was responsible for hyping conference attendees for DFA Summit 2019 "With(in) Communities", DFA's annual conference that gathers professionals, educators, alumni, and students to discuss how we can contribute within our communites to designing a better, more equitable future.

During my three months, I broadened my skillset as a designer and as a project manager. As the Chief Welcome Experience Intern, I tracked the conference user experience of over 300 attendees within 3-4 varieties of different stakeholders. I crafted multiple conference swag options for our attendees that were both sustainable and multipurpose. Because my role required a lot of inventory and budgeting, I became adept at manipulating and organizing spreadsheets. I was also tasked with obtaining in-kind sponsorships, where I was able to obtain over $5000 in in-kind goods and served as a communications liason with local and global businesses. Although I was responsible for many elements regarding the welcome experience, I was given a lot of flexibility in my approach on how to tackle each of my projects. I had the opportunity to work collaboratively with my colleagues and iterate with them to gather feedback on my overall design process.

INTERNSHIP TIMELINE

Above is the overall timeline of my internship

PROJECT: CONFERENCE SWAG

THE CHALLENGE

For this year's Summit DFA 2019, our design sprint theme revolved around climate change and sustainability. I wanted the theme of the conference to not be reflected just in the conference branding and promotional materials but also in the swag and gifts that each attendee would recieve. This presented many challenges because in the past, conference swag was often freebies such as a custom plastic waterbottle, a drawstring bag or flimsy tote bag, stickers, notebook, pen, and for one year, a frisbee, just for fun. Conference swag often remind me of goodies you would recieve a career fair or a hackathon, it's nice to have but not necessarily useful or sustainable. Actually, it can be wasteful with the amount of materials needed to yield 300+ of a specific item, especially if it's not a particularly nice one that people could reuse. And if it's not reusable, people are likely to dump it rather than keep multiple of the same flimsy tote bag.

MY CONCEPT

I believe there were many opportunity spaces to innovate around the construct of a swag bag. Does it have to be a flimsy tote bag? What if it came in a different shape? What kind of items could I put inside that people could practically use at and beyond the conference. A lot of questions arose during my brainstorm and hence, I arrived at my "how can we" statement.

How can we craft a swag bag that is memorable yet versatile, compact, and maintains its usefulness both at and beyond the conference?

Initial propoosals of the swag bag included fanny packs, bucket hats, pop sockets, travel tumblers, round buttons, adhesive card holders and much more. However, after much discussion and back and forth with the DFA Fellows (Ross, Glory, Irfan, Kelly), my fellow interns (Sneha, Stephanie, Thi, Kate), the director, Rebecca, and Lexi and Alden, I finally came to a decision. Below is a photo of DFA Summit 2019 swag bag that all attendees recieved this year.

The swag bag is a travel-sized toiletry bag with a rolled t-shirt and a white folded baseball cap, both branded with DFA Summit 2019. There's also a stainless steel straw set, an soft enamel pin of the DFA logo, and a food-safe reusable ziploc bag. We also included a G2 pilot pen, and a Muji recycled paper notebook with the DFA studio poster folded into the notebook's dust jacket.

ITEM BREAKDOWN

THE BAG

I really wanted the swag bag to be both travel-friendly, versatile, and sustainable or to at least fulfill these criteria as much as possible. Because a good majority of attendees are not local to Chicago, I didn't want to produce a swag bag that would take more space in an attendees check-in or carry-on. I also wanted to be mindful that the items I put in could pass TSA guidelines. The idea for a travel-sized toiletry bag came around because when all the other goodies are removed from the swag bag, the bag itself could still be used as a travel toiletry bag. It's a nice cylindrical shape so it's extremely space efficient and it comes with its own handle, making it very convenient to be on-the-go.

WEARABLE ITEMS

The t-shirt was a necessity required by the DFA National office because at the end of the conference takes a jumping photo wearing the conference shirt. I also included a baseball cap since it was fitting for Chicago's sunny weather and it was something that all attendees could wear due to it's one size fits all feature.

STRAW AND ZIPLOC BAG

The stainless steel straw set recommended to me by my fellow intern, Sneha. After some research and consideration, I was able to source an option from our preferred vendor that would allow our stainless steels straw to come in its own custom DFA bag with a pipette cleaner to clean the strainless straw. I believe this was a much better option that a water bottle because we could reduce the amount of plastic straws used during conference meals and we could encourage attendees to BYOB (bring your own bottle). The reusable ziploc bag was another fun suggestion made by another fellow intern, Thi. Initially, I was concerned that they might be expensive since some items that are meant to be more sustainable than conventional options (a typical plastic bag) come at a higher price. Fortunately, I found small snack-size food-safe reusable ziploc bags that were still in our budget for our massive bulk order. These were great throughout the conference, we coordinated with our caterer to make our snacks self-serve, therefore putting the reusable ziploc bags to use.

CONFERENCE ESSENTIALS AND MEMORABILIA

Because it was also Design For America's 10th anniversary, I also wanted some pieces in our swag to be memorable. I included a soft enamel pin based off of the DFA's logo because it was aesthetically beautiful and it was a durable piece of branding that encouraged DFA pride and camaraderie. The poster the DFA passes out every year with the newly added studios added to the large cohort of 40+ studios across the nation is also a piece of memorabilia I wanted to innovate around with. Because it's a high quality poster, it's often difficult to travel with since the best option is to roll it. I wanted to consolidate the amount of space it took, so I worked with our visual designer to redesign it so that when it's folded, it would be a dust jacket to the notebook that was also included, preserving its quality and saving space. The final two pieces were a notebook and a pen, two essentails necessary for brainstorming and sketching at a design education conference. Muji's notebooks are all made of recycled paper which was I selected them as a vendor and Pilot G2 pens work great with Muji notebooks.

IMPACT & REFLECTION

Being the Chief Welcome Experience intern was both an intimidating yet rewarding experience. Brainstorming what to put in the swag bags and then handing them off during Summit was an incredible since I was able to watch an idea grow and see to implementation.

As a first-time attendee of Summit 2019, I had little experience about what past DFA Summits were like. However, I learned my lack of experience was also an opportunity for me to innovate and explore without expectations. Despite my concerns, I recieved a lot of positive feedback on all the projects I worked on. Jessica Helfland, editor of the Design Observer and designer of the National Design Award, appreciated "that all the items [in the swag bag] were really useful." Liz Gerber, the faculty founder of Design For America, she commented how her children would have really enjoyed each of the items in the swag bag and was thoroughly impressed how compact, sustainable, and practical each of the items were. Kyra W., a community partner from the Sierra Club, enjoyed that the speaker gift of being able to donate to a non-profit project of your choice.

Initially, I wasn't sure how human-centered design would intersect with my role. However, I gradually noticed that I was using aspects of the double diamond design proeess when conducting user research on past DFA conference feedback, brainstorming new swag options, affinity mapping which swag options seemed most similar, and iterating these steps. Working at Design For America has shown me that human-centered design can be practiced in contexts where you least expect it.

Although my swag bag was a great success, in hindsight, I would have liked to incorporate another aspect into the swag bag, community engagement. The items in the current swag bag were useful on their own, but it would have been great if somehow these items got attendees to discuss and engage with another at the conference since it's one of the few times in the year where DFAers all across America can be united. I noticed at this year's conference, that attendees used stickers to exchange contact information with one another. If given the time, I would like to capitalize on expanding DFA Summit's swag social capital's capabilities, so that studios across all of Design For America can be a closer tight-knit and cohesive community.

Special shoutout to the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 DFA Fellows, DFA staff, and my fellow interns, Stephanie, Sneha, Thi, and Kate for empowering and encouraging me and making my 10 weeks truly unforgettable.

MY TEAM

More coming soon!