Facilitation | Jan-Feb 2024
Many cities around the world are facing the challenge of extreme heat. I had the opportunity to help plan and facilitate a 3-day co-creation at the World Health Organization in Geneva on developing a global heat resiliency service. There were 56 participants including city representatives, intergovernmental agencies, researchers, and technical and policy specialists who presented concepts for improving heat resiliency in cities based on their collective experience. During the session, I supported breakout groups, ensuring that tangible ideas were generated and that participants were able to network and develop intergovernmental partnerships.
Design leadership | 2022
Product designers are usually embedded within development teams in order to collaborate cross-functionally. This is generally a good thing, but it does come with challenges. A common challenge is maintaining enough collaboration amongst designers and building up a design practice. I had the opportunity to work remotely with three designers across different time zones. We didn’t work on the same projects so it was hard to share a common vision and goals. To improve our sense of togetherness, I spoke with each designer about their experience and drafted several iterations of a design team vision that we could build together. The output included written statements on a vision, mission, team values, core competencies, team structure, ideal outcomes, and a maturity model for growth. This became the backdrop for more concrete goal setting each year. For two years, we consistently held weekly design collaboration sessions and worked towards several shared design practice goals.
Facilitation | Jun 11- 22, 2018
The innovation hub of a college of applied arts and technology wanted to help students develop the innovation skills required to be successful in the workforce. More specifically, they wanted to exemplify a culture of innovation by training a diverse set of faculty members to become “innovation champions”. I co-led a hands-on 2.5 day innovation training workshop at the college. My colleague and I worked with the organizers ahead of time to learn about their goals, timeline, and desired outcomes and we included them in the process to customize the workshop based on their needs. Together we decided to cover an end-to-end design process curriculum while also tackling a real problem in small groups. The training was extremely well received with 30-40 faculty members participating. Through surveys, it was reported that they enjoyed the hands-on element, noting that the design process was versatile enough to be applied across fields.
Project lead and design | 2017
When joining a new company, training is a critical part of building job familiarity and confidence by learning about the organization structure, articulating key interactions within the organization, networking with other teams, and learning about how the business works. The commercial and training department of a large company was looking to develop a more engaging foundational training program. Previously, training consisted of many presentations delivered by department speakers across the organization. I was responsible for project scoping, writing the statement of work, team management, client management, and the visual production of new training materials. Working with two other team members, we developed a 3-day training experience that incorporated many customized interactive elements. The training managers received great response and praise for the level of engagement.
Designer and facilitator | 2013
A rectal cancer surgeon was leading a three-year study to ensure that all patients with rectal cancer in Canada received high quality clinical care and excellent patient experience. As part of the study process, patients, family members, and physicians were brought together to identify key patient experience moments and indicators for measuring the success in rectal cancer centres across Canada. As a designer and workshop facilitator, I conducted patient interviews and facilitated a 2-day workshop with 30 participants. It was an engaging session that even included a game of family feud where physicians had to guess what patients and their family members voted as the top indicators. Based on one of the top patient experience moments identified, the surgeon went on to develop a patient engagement tool (digital app) for rectal cancer patients to keep track of their health symptoms after surgery.
Designer and facilitator | 2013
With the launch of a paradigm-shifting Alzheimer’s medication on the horizon, there was an unknown question of how the Alzheimer’s care ecosystem might evolve in the US in the next 5-10 years. As a core team designer, I helped visualize three plausible care models and facilitated two workshops that brought together a diverse group of advisors including national specialists, leading primary care doctors, advocacy leaders, payers, entrepreneurs, and members of the client team to co-create how those scenarios might play out in reality. By iterating on the proposed care models with different expert groups, the project team was able to refine each future scenario and align our client's internal stakeholders to a shared vision of the future. Outputs from the co-creation guided the ongoing brand, business, and tactical planning roadmap.
Facilitation | 2012
An urban innovation hub was looking to increase patient and healthcare practitioner outcomes by co-creating an online social network for its community members. I helped plan and facilitate a full day human-centered design workshop with 120 healthcare leaders in Toronto. The workshop was hands-on with interactive activities to develop, integrate and scale innovative IT solutions for different end users within the healthcare system. The ideas generated were migrated to an online social platform made accessible to participants. Over two-thirds of attendees contributed to the resulting portal and the innovation hub was able to continue pursuing stakeholder engagement strategies.
Facilitation | 2012
A hospital was looking to help its internal stakeholders understand and apply best practices in improving patient experience across the hospital. In collaboration with a business school, I helped facilitate a full day hands-on workshops with top physicians and executives that mapped needs across departments and functions. It was an engaging experience for the hospital stakeholders because it took them out of their day-to-day routines. The hospital partners were then able to build on the ideas to initiate improvements in patient-care across the hospital.
