As designers, we strive to create products, experiences, visual, and other solutions that are useful, usable, and desirable for the intended audiences. This requires a deep knowledge of user pain points, needs, and desires…but what would happen if we use that knowledge to deliver users to their destination in the most frustrating way possible?
In this fun, light-hearted design jam, participants will compete to design uniquely un-user-friendly solutions for a given prompt. While it may sound simple, designing the these terrible processes could be deceptively difficult. Participants will follow the classic design process, but look instead for “holes of opportunity” to create, exacerbate, and twist problems instead of solutions.
This design jam is “the mental equivalent of standing on your head”—it allows us as designers to take what we do for our day job and see design from a fun, new perspective. Let’s have fun, thinking creatively, and change the way the story unfolds by viewing the design process in a new way.
What’s in it for participants?
Other than an opportunity to take part in a fun design jam, there will be food, swag giveaways, and networking opportunities.
Event schedule
First 20 min – arrival, meet & greet, networking
20 min – brief presentation, explanation of challenge goals, instructions, and expectations; design challenge prompt announced
60 min – participants work on challenge within their teams
20 min – share and tell: teams present their designs
30 min – winners announced, closing statements, and enjoy refreshments