Impactful Careers: Tackling Wicked Problems Through Professional Innovation
🌟 Event Highlights
In an increasingly complex world, the most pressing challenges—climate change, inequality, and technological disruption—demand innovative solutions. "Impactful Careers: Tackling Wicked Problems Through Professional Innovation" is a workshop designed for those eager to make a difference through their careers. This session will inspire you to think creatively about your professional path, showing you how to align your skills and passions with the urgent need for change. Join us to explore how your career can contribute to solving the world's most intractable problems.
🎯 Who Should Attend?
Anyone pursuing the journey towards an impactful career is ongoing and requires continuous reflection, innovation, and courage. Armed with a better understanding of wicked problems and how your career can make a difference, you're now equipped to take the next steps towards professional innovation for social impact. Let's be the change-makers our world needs.
📅 Agenda
Introduction to Wicked Problems: Understanding the complexity and scope of global challenges that require innovative career responses.
Self-Discovery & Impact Alignment: Exercises to identify personal values, skills, and passions.
Creative Career Design for Impact: Initial ideas for aligning career aspirations with problems meaningful to you
Actioning Strategies for Professional Innovation: Practical strategies for integrating problem-solving into your professional life.
AC4D Community Connect
Join AC4D for an engaging evening designed to strengthen connections within our creative community. Whether you're an aspiring designer, a current student, or an industry professional, the AC4D Community Connect Night offers a unique opportunity to mingle with our alumni, faculty, and mentors in a relaxed, informal setting.
Digital Fieldwork: How to Conduct Remote Field Research
In an era where in-person context is invaluable to observe human behavior, but isn't always possible, understanding how to adapt our research methodologies is crucial. This insightful session delves into the best practices of remote research, emphasizing strategic planning, effective language usage, and communication skills tailored for virtual environments.
Key Takeaways:
Effective Recruitment: Learn the art of attracting and incentivizing participants for remote research, ensuring a diverse and relevant sample.
Structuring the Remote Interview: Gain insights into the logistics of conducting remote interviews, from technology setup to creating a conducive virtual environment.
Data Synthesis Techniques: Explore methods for synthesizing qualitative research data, turning remote interactions into actionable insights.
Join us to familiarize yourself with remote research basics, overcoming geographical barriers and enhancing your skills in virtual data collection and analysis.
Preparation
Ensure a stable internet connection for Zoom.
Familiarize yourself with FigJam for interactive activities.
Have a notepad or digital document ready for personal notes.
Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is needed!
Agenda
Intro to field research
How to plan your own study
How to talk to humans
Interview best practices
Discussion
Everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. Zoom link will be sent to everyone who registers through Meetup.
Rapid Innovation: Mastering Idea Validation with Paper
Join us for a hands-on event for anyone eager to refine their ideas rapidly and effectively. No prior experience in design needed! This session will cover a brief introduction to the fundamentals of paper prototyping, a low-fidelity approach that empowers quick iterations and immediate feedback. Participants will learn how to transform their initial sketches into paper prototypes, enabling them to visualize and test their concepts with minimal resources.
Preparation
Ensure a stable internet connection for Zoom.
Familiarize yourself with FigJam for interactive activities.
Have a notepad or digital document ready for personal notes.
A few sheets of blank paper (printer paper will work!)
A sharpie or large marker, preferably black
Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is needed!
Key Takeaways
Idea Development: Sketch, iterate, and evolve a personal design idea into a tangible paper prototype.
Quick Idea Validation: Understand how paper prototyping offers a fast, low-cost method for testing ideas.
Enhanced Process: Learn a practical approach for improving your idea with minimal resources
Everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. Zoom link will be sent to everyone who registers through Meetup.
Future-Proof Your Career: Crafting Your Professional Blueprint
In this virtual workshop, we reimagine career development with a product manager's mindset. It's designed for anyone looking to take proactive control of their career path. With Senior Product Manager Beau Romero, you'll discover how to craft a vivid vision of your ideal professional life and build a personalized roadmap to enhance your skills.
This workshop is perfect for those feeling stuck or eager to intentionally steer their career in a new, fulfilling direction.
Preparation
Ensure a stable internet connection for Zoom.
Familiarize yourself with FigJam for interactive activities.
Have a notepad or digital document ready for personal notes.
Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is needed!
Agenda
Introduction
Welcome and orientation to the virtual tools (Zoom and FigJam).
Brief personal introduction and an overview of the workshop goals.
Activity: Declare Victory
Storyboarding to define and visualize the desired career trajectory.
Setting clear and achievable career goals.
Activity: Portfolio Requirements
Group discussion to pinpoint key skills and potential career challenges.
Mapping out a comprehensive skill set and identifying career advancement strategies.
Activity: Gap Assessment
Self-reflection to assess current skills and pinpoint areas needing improvement.
Visual mapping of skill levels and identifying key areas for development.
Activity 4: Skills Roadmap
Crafting a custom plan for skill development and career progression.
Establishing specific learning objectives and career milestones.
Everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. Zoom link will be sent to everyone who registers through Meetup.
Social Healing: Can We Co-Design Artifacts to Help Us Collectively Heal?
Every one of us, at some point in life, deals with major loss, and the grief of losing. Whatever form this loss takes, we know it often feels like an alienating and lonely experience. But loss is social — and so is healing.
Researchers Catherine Woodiwiss and Denise Dicks are embarking on a year-long project to help fill the gaps in our social discourse and our institutional systems around healing from loss. In this session, they will share their process and learnings, as well as a prototype in its early stages.
Together, we’ll ask questions like: How might we ethically and sensitively structure design process around vulnerable experiences? How can co-design help reach further into our collective problems, and our collective healing? And can the design process, itself, help provide healing? In this session, you will get to:
Learn some tips and best practices for structuring and leading a design jam on vulnerable, personal topics
Learn some frameworks for engaging other disciplines (like science) in the design process
Engage with, and offer feedback and insights on, a big problem statement and theory of change around design + healing and vulnerability
Interact with and provide feedback on an early prototype for social healing
Everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. Zoom link will be sent to everyone who registers through Meetup.
Designing a Delightful First Experience
If you want a second date with your new users, delight them on the first.
Make it fun, feed them with payoffs, and energize them for more.
Fail to do so... they'll bounce for the door : (
Join us for a session covering the pillars for designing a better starting experience. The kind that gets new users excited and turns them into happy, paying fans.
We'll cover practical ways to:
get people to the first wow moment (faster)
troubleshoot parts where people are getting stuck or dropping off
play with the levers that impact motivation & energy
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Everyone is welcome, and no prior experience is needed. A zoom link will be sent to everyone who registers through Meetup.
Design for Impact Fall Bootcamp
Who is this for?
If you are interested in learning about design for social impact and/or applying to the Austin Center for Design – regardless of your professional background – this workshop is for you. All levels of design ability are welcome, even people who have never done this before. The only prerequisite is passion and a willingness to try. There are limited participant seats, which are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
What will I learn?
During this workshop, you'll learn an overview of the process designers use to solve problems:
You'll learn how to conduct research with people who are in the middle of a wicked problem
You'll learn how to translate that research into meaningful insights
You’ll learn how to harness those insights into concepts and bring an idea to life through sketching
Above all, you’ll learn how to build empathy with real people and gain the basics to further explore design for impact.
Note: $ 25 admission includes lunch and refreshments during the bootcamp.
About the facilitators
Alumni and instructors from the Austin Center for Design will facilitate this workshop.
Regular Application Deadline: One-Year Immersive
With no more than 15 students per cohort, this program equips students with the knowledge and skills needed to transform the world through design.
Proof of Concept Student Presentations
From research and insights to a variety of concepts, students have actively been testing prototypes with people they hope to serve. Tune in to learn more!
Early Admission Deadline: One-Year Immersive
This program transforms students into high-value creative problem solvers who go on to lead successful and fulfilling careers in design, social impact, and beyond.
AC4D Learning Lab: Ideation for the Real World
What does it really take to discover and validate an idea? Join us for a hands-on virtual session as Emiliano Villarreal, an AC4D instructor, shares his approach as a designer and startup advisor for rapidly generating and testing ideas! Everyone is welcome and no prior experience is needed.
Application Deadline: One-Year Immersive Program
With no more than 15 students per cohort, this program equips students with the knowledge and skills needed to transform the world through design.
Want to be a designer? What you need to know before you take the leap.
Hear Austin Center from Design alumni share their wisdom and experience about how they pivoted into a design career.
Early Application Deadline: One-Year Immersive Program
This program transforms students into high-value creative problem solvers who go on to lead successful and fulfilling careers in design, social impact, and beyond.
AC4D Alumni Panel
Curious about the one-year immersive program at Austin Center for Design? Join us for a virtual alumni panel to learn about their AC4D and career journey.