While working as a service designer at the Designit NYC office, I led and co-led a series of internal initiatives. These projects strengthened Designit’s culture of collaboration, independence, and experimentation.

To celebrate Service Design Day 2019, Designit partnered with the Service Design Network’s NYC chapter to create a 3-hour design hackathon focused on the 2019 theme: “Do good, give back.” We wanted to use the event as a way to help a local, social impact-focused organization solve a challenge they were facing. We partnered with the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, a non-profit whose mission is to promote and protect affordable homeownership in New York. The Center needed fresh ideas for a new program they were launching, called HomeFix, that would help NYC homeowners who needed repairs. During the event, participants divided into teams to come up with ideas to support homeowners at different stages of a home repair process.

The event was really successful: we provided the Center with dozens of fresh ideas and decided to partner further by helping them with the full launch of HomeFix (see project here).

I WORKED ON

Project management, partnerships, event production, workshop creation, visual design

I COLLABORATED WITH

Maria Chercoles, Nicole Okumu, Jeff Brown, Mitja Behnke, Center for NYC Neighborhoods, Service Design Network NYC Chapter, plus the rest of the Designit NYC studio

With two other Designit colleagues, I started an internal Sustainability initiative to understand how Designit could approach sustainability both at an organizational level as well as the individual level. The goals of the initiative are to educate our studio around sustainability issues and build capability in that area as a studio. So far, we conducted an extensive research projects and presented findings internally, organized a tour of our local recycling facility for our office, and led share-out sessions around different micro topics of sustainability. We are now focused on integrating our learnings into the strategic plan of Designit as an organization.

I WORKED ON

Research, project management

I COLLABORATED WITH

Yvonne Romano, Maria Chercoles

We organized an event at Designit NYC to explore the topic of design and inclusivity. The evening consisted of a panel of speakers who approach inclusivity and accessibility from different disciplines. The guest speakers for the event were: Liz Jackson, Anita Perr, David Vega-Barachowitz, Kohzy Koh and Mari Nakano.

I WORKED ON

Event planning, production, concepting, research

I COLLABORATED WITH

Nicole Okumu, Yvonne Romano, Henry Fording Eddins, Grace Vincent, Navit Keren, Joyce Jiang