Service Design
This is not your everyday customer service approach. I don’t want my users to end up in an endless rabbit hole of confusion about the task they are asked to complete or when trying to find an answer to a problem that helps them complete that task at hand. I get a lot of pride from crafting an experience for users that works easily and without friction. I want my users to get in, get out and rave about how easy it all was.
As a designer, but also as an educator, I am moved by programs like this one that offer equal opportunities to young minds everywhere, regardless of the prestige of the institution, or exclusivity of opportunities.
This is a big step forward in creating a more inclusive design culture across the board, and I am proud we could take part in that.
Dalit Shalom, Product Design Lead at The New York Times
On-boarding
The Creative Jam program exists for the impact Dalit mentions. The Jam team makes this experience happen because we focus on taking care of our participants. As program manager, my role is to ensure that everyone is attended to, they know exactly what is expected of them, and they are surrounded by support. Participation in these programs is above and beyond the partners, students and reviewers' daily activities, so it is imperative that engaging in this event is not a big lift.
ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS SHOW UP
We formalized Partner meetings so only three are needed to plan the event. Provide dedicated training on their roles with Best Practices and supplemental video training for reference. Attentive support via text message while the event is live.
Finally, the secret sauce that pulls all of these together are complete calendar invitations with detailed information and links to all the materials. And agendas. Always agendas. All of the details and attention to user experience make a Creative Jam an incredible program to participate in.
On behalf of Instagram, we wanted to thank you for the opportunity to connect and share with 570+ students.
We'd also like to call out how thoughtfully run the entire program was from end to end, how operationally easy it was for Instagram to participate and the level of production starting with the first email.
it's easy to see how much you care bout elevating aspiring designers and are eager to put out a quality show.
Mig Reyes, Product Design Manager, at Instagram
On-boarding
Building off of the work the team and I have done for the Creative Jams, building out surface area for users in The Perfect Match program was already off to a good start.
The challenge for this engagement program has been about amping up the fun at every turn, in addition to teaching each user about their expectations. The first area to tackle was making sure the show participants are onboarded properly. Games take time to learn and master, and we needed to do that quickly. As a result of our efforts, all endpoints have successfully played the game and participated in the show with ease. That is a sign of a terrific onboarding experience!
SUPPORTED END POINTS
Created a game play document used to train the clients. Play and practice the game a few times during training. Host day-of-tech-checks to confirm settings and provide high-touch support on the day of the show to ease show nerves.
Mood board Review
While the off-air review process for Creative Jams has been in practice for a few years, the one for The Perfect Match needed to be built and built fast. The overall system had many similarities but the content is much different, the review experience needed to align with the gameplay and most importantly, it needed to remove bias.
I built out a draft review system in a matter of days (see above) that scaled the mood board intake immediately and am now currently improving pain points to make this a well-oiled machine.
The main area of focus in the off-air review was to access the mood board signification. To understand how well the visual communication is of any given mood board, we needed to have people test the work.
I built sets of surveys with 10 mood boards (show a gif) each that went out for review. Each set was reviewed by 10 off-air reviewers and then scored to see if the reviewers could understand the intention. The more off-air reviewers that were able to guess the correct answer the better the signification.
Those scores were then translated into a heat map that quickly communicated which boards were the clearest to identify based on the sample. These results guide the choice of whom the team brings into the show screening and successfully eliminate bias on the viability of the mood boards.
This process is ongoing and improving as each show occurs.