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đī¸ I co-founded the FIRST and ONLY Discord community that educate UX design through design sprints and collaborative workshops.
BACKGROUND
đŠđģâđģ My Role: đ¸ Co-Founder đ¸ Sprint Facilitator đ¸ Product Design
đđŧ Since community inception, I have...
âī¸ Grew and expanded community to over 1300 members through networking and promoting
âī¸ Facilitated over 20+ remote design sprints, educational workshops and community events for members to engage and learn UX design
âī¸ Provided retrospectives and design feedback to workshop participants and members
âī¸ Formed partnerships with organizations and other Discord servers for events and hackathon
âī¸ Increased and maintained server retention rate by 40% through events and member engagements
DISCORD COMMUNITY
Here are some of the responsible areas I enacted as the co-founder:
⥠Server Analysis
Team meetings are held bi-monthly to discuss server analytics, traffic and audience. I review and extract data though Discord's server insight analysis, and present the findings to my team. I also facilitate discussion and brainstorming sessions along with my co-founder to reflect on challenges and resolve any conflicts or issues that arise while continuously build and expand the community.
đĨ Members Engagement
Through Discord analytics review, I would formulate new ideas, strategize solution and coordinate events with my co-founder to increase member engagements, communication and retention rates. Currently, we promote our community through the use of social media and invitation from our existing members. With such organic growth rate, we maintained on average over 40% retention rates since community inception.
đ Partnerships Management
I co-manage partnerships and external communications with our partners through organizing joint events and sponsored workshops for our members. I sought out to network and meet with potential partners for future event collaborations. In the recruitment process, I've learned to set boundaries and clear communication to ensure mutual goals are satisfied in continuation to flourish through possible partnerships.
đ Below are some partners I have managed and worked with.
DESIGN SPRINTS
Inspired by AJ&Smart's Sprint methodology, TCS has formulated our own version in educating design thinking to students and aspiring UX designers in a 3 weeks workshop series.
đ TCS Design Sprint Guidelines
Using the design thinking approach, I plan and design the sprint workshops with current trending topics (pandemic relieve, elections, mental health etc.). User and secondary research are conducted to backup the challenge prompts, with methods such as surveys and user interviews to hypothesize a problem statement. Brainstorming activities are planned ahead of time, and it varies per workshops depending on the subject matter of the sprint.
Here is a breakdown of activities during TCS remote design sprint workshops:
đđŧ Ice breaker game
đđŧ Define the challenge
đđŧ Brainstorming activities (varies, depending on the topic)
đđŧ Rapid prototyping
đđŧ Retrospective & feedback
đ Below are some screenshots of past events I have facilitated.
đŦ Retrospectives
đŦ Resources
Our members and anyone who are interested in participating in the workshops can learn more about our sprints in following video. I assisted in the planning and art direction of the video, and took charge of the script writing and voiceover recording.
đ Workshop Feedbacks
It is crucial to receive feedback from our participants on how we performed in the workshops. In doing so helps determine whether my facilitation method, the topics curated for the sprints and overall workshop experience are desirable to our members.
Surveys are collected at the end of each workshop, and ratings are asked to be provided on a scale of 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent). Overall, my facilitation ratings have been praised among our members.
EVENTS & OTHER WORKSHOPS
To further engage with our members, I planned and facilitate many other educational and social events. Below are some of the past events took place in the spring and summer of 2021.
PODCAST
Today I learned is a community podcast series hosted by TCS' Co-Founder Melanie Hicks, featuring professionals from various background to discuss issues they face in the professional field, design problems and user experience related topics.
I shared my career transition journey and hackathon experience in the third episode of the community podcast along with two other guest speakers, Eric Lee (Founder and President at VentureXperience) and Angel Takooree (Jr. UX Designer at Lockwood Publishing, LTD).
COMMUNITY WEBSITE
The Collective Studio website was designed and built by TCS admin team in 2021, to provide an informational hub for current and potential members who are interested to join the server for design sprints and learn more about the community. A contact form was implemented on the site for potential partners and collaborators to inquire about hosting educational events or outreach for any questions and concerns.
During the development phase of the website, I was responsible for the following:
⥠Researched and performed SWOT analysis on competitors such as Design Buddies, student of UXD, and Hexagon UX to identity the pros and cons of each individual communities.
đĨ Constructed surveys and interviewed community members on their motivations, goals and frustrations of other UX communities, as well as their needs and interest of TCS.
âī¸ Identified the MVP (minimum viable product) through the facilitation of brainstorming sessions and design sprint.
đ§ Ideated design solution with low fidelity mockups using Figma.
đ§ Visualized the product solution from high fidelity mockups to clickable prototypes.
đ Conducted user and preference tests with community members to determine the efficiency and usability of two design variations.
đ§ Evaluated heuristics of the website's UXUI design, and proofread UX content writing.
đŖī¸ Maintained constant communication with developers on project hands-off and update designs based on feedbacks and deployment constrains.
What I've learned
The Collective Studio has just celebrated its one year anniversary! Here are some of the reflections I've collected from co-founding and managing this community:
âĄī¸ It takes tremendous amount of time, dedication and hard work to run a community. I learned to stay humble in the process, and reach out to other established UX communities for guidance and help while building TCS.
âĄī¸ Consistency is one of the major factors to steady growth and expansion.
âĄī¸ Through working with other communities, organizations and companies, I learned that it is important to establish boundaries and communicate clearly to achieve ideal partnerships.
âĄī¸ One of the biggest challenge I've face as a co-founder is to manage and guide the admins and moderators of the community. I establish realistic expectations and ensure authenticity with our staff to experience opportunities for their UX career and personal growth through working with us on community related projects and events.
âĄī¸ I've discovered my passion in workshop facilitation, and plan to give back to the design community through mentorship in the future when I have accumulated more skills and experience in UX and product design.
Check out my other projects!
Šī¸ Kuma Design 2021