Design x Data for Social Impact

In 2018, there was only one data-related Austin Design Week (ADW) event. It quickly filled up, and there was a demand for more. In 2019, Jordan Muzquiz and I decided to take matters into our own hands and plan an ADW event we would want to attend - we created Design x Data for Social Impact. The purpose of our event was to make participants aware of the tools that would allow them to quantify the impact of their designs through the lens of a social issue. On November 8th, more than 40 people came to our two-hour event, which was part speaker panel, part workshop.

THE NEED

“Data” has been a compelling topic for the Austin creative community, but historically there hasn’t been enough events to meet the demand.

When I joined data.world, Austin Design Week was kicking off around the same time. I had always enjoyed attending a variety of ADW events and was hoping to find one about data this time around. I wanted to learn more about how product designers used data or where design and data intersect in the professional world, but the only data-related event was about data visualizations, and it was already at capacity.

I spoke to the organizers of ADW and learned that I wasn’t the only one who noticed this gap. Despite the demand, there weren’t many data-related events for Austin Design Week, and even fewer that framed data usage in an applicable way for designers.

THE SOLUTION

Join forces with others, take matters into our own hands, and fill the design x data gap.

I was introduced to Jordan Muzquiz, the founder of Data for Good ATX, who had similar thoughts on wanting to bring data into the design community. Through a series of early morning meetings, we decided to combine our ideas and teach data-informed practices to the design community through the topical issue of increasing voter registration. We brought in community leaders to introduce the topic, discuss voter registration challenges, and guide participants through a workshop on how to use data to quantify the success of their designs. By the end of the event, participants not only walked out with a better understanding of how a data-informed mindset can work with design thinking practices but also were educated on practical steps for how to apply it to their projects.

THE EVENT — PART ONE

Inviting leaders that stood at the intersection of design & data helped us kick off the event on the right note.

For the first part of the event, we brought in subject matter experts Charlie Burgoyne (CEO of Valkeryie Intelligence), Susan Le (UX Director at Indeed), and Eric Boam (Associate Director at AT&T and data visualization hobbyist).

We discussed where they saw the intersection of design and data, how they used the two disciplines together, and the unprecedented legal implications of using data in design. This active panel session framed the mindsets of participants and primed them for the second part of our event: the workshop.

THE EVENT — PART TWO

We created a workshop that combines traditional design thinking exercises with a data-informed mindset to quantify results.

Charlie Bonner, Communications Manager at MOVE Texas, introduced the challenges his organization is facing with increasing voter turnout. Once the participants were comfortable with the challenge, they dug deeper into the problem, started brainstorming solutions, and landed on what the group thought would be most impactful for the identified challenge.

Next, they worked on what “success” meant for their group and developing the success criteria from different perspectives. This way of thinking is a practical and essential skill needed for AB testing in product development. Lastly, the participants visualized the types of data they needed and illustrated how they would best communicate the results.

An amazing experience — to be able to host this event and design it from scratch.

Creating and hosting a workshop was a new challenge, so we started planning early on to give ourselves time to make mistakes. In the end, we were able to identify the right sequence of activities that accurately highlighted how a data-informed mindset can help quantify the success of ideas developed through a design thinking exercise.