Design talks
Cross-team sharing
I helped to start a concept of sharing across our large (at the time) 30 person or so design & development team (it’s now grown to close to 60). As our team evolved, it was becoming more and more difficult to stay connected. What we found useful in smaller sessions were leaders of projects or initiatives sharing what they’d done or something cool they’d found. So we took that concept and pushed it further.
Design talks is a concept for designers, developers, UX ops folks, or managers to share lighting-style talks to our full team that helped to spur creativity, show what you were working on, gain insight across the team, or just be an opportunity to meet someone that you rarely connect with.
The idea became a quarterly series where volunteers would share. The sessions became invaluable. New team members would present slides on who they were, about their family, what they liked to do, what type of team member they are, etc. It created connections across the team, allowing team members to show off what they are passionate about.
The name
“Design” in its name helped others understand that design is more than just what something looks like. It’s how it functions, why it’s important, what users thought about it, etc.
I highly encourage anyone that’s on a large team to set up a regular “Design Talks” series to help your team stay connected.
