"Strong Verbal Communication Skills A Must" - for IxDA Chicago

DD+D had the pleasure of offering it's verbal communication skills workshop for designers for May's  IxDA Chicago meeting.
Here are the details below including participant comments, pictures, and a link to registration 


Workshop description:

This interactive workshop will apply theatre and improv techniques to help designers improve their verbal and nonverbal communication skills. The ability to present a design solution and communicate its merits on different levels in a way that is understood by different audiences can be a differentiator in the fast-changing and highly competitive industries in which design operates.  This small group session will allow for individual assessment and feedback. 20 participant limit. 

Participants are asked to prepare a 2 mins. talk on a design related /work related topic please. For additional info contact byron@dramaticdiversity.com 

Wednesday May 15th. 2013, 5:30pm – 8:00pm

Location
Leo Burnett 
35 W.Wacker Dr.
Blue Room 31st. Fl.
Chicago, IL. 60601

Fee - $20 Non-refundable


Instructor : Byron Stewart


Participant Comments:
"A great deal of good material was covered in a short time."
"Some great take aways"
"This could easily have been an all-day seminar"
"The active participation makes the tools immediately relevant and meaningful. I learned a lot from my fellow students a well."
"You are a great presenter!"
"The instructor provided clear critique and examples."
"Thought it was nice to refresh/polish my presentation skills."

DD+D Presents for the American Marketing Association of Chicago

Marketing the Customer Experience: Balancing Technology and the Human Touch

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Catalyst Ranch, 656 W. Randolph St., 4th Floor - Jitterbug Room, Chicago, IL 60661

Join the Consumer Packaged Goods SIG on Tuesday, April 30th for a discussion on how innovative marketers balance technology with the human touch in order to create the best experience for their customers.

With consumers embracing smartphones and iPads in all aspects of their daily lives, it’s not surprising that more and more service providers use the technology to enhance the customer experience. At the same time, McDonald’s is bringing together unlikely collaborators from the disciplines of theater and design to help the world’s largest foodservice provider connect more personally with customers.
Our guest speakers will share their experiences and the innovative ideas they’ve employed to measurably and positively impact the bottom line in consumer services.

Key takeaways include insight into how:
1. The design of the consumer service experience can be as important as the design of the product packaging for leading consumer brands.
2. Innovation in services marketing is often a collaboration of unexpected partners.
3. Marketing and educating employees is a critical driver to the success of new service offerings.
4. The right combination of technology and marketing creates positive customer experiences while the wrong mix can easily drive away customers.
5. Applying marketing and design principles to track results and improve the customer experience in a way that contributes to the bottom line is critical regardless of which innovation path you choose for your services.

Event Agenda:
5:30-6:00 pm - Networking and Refreshments
6:00-7:00 pm - Presentation and Q&A
7:00-7:30 pm - More Networking and Refreshments

Speakers:

Jeff Pollard Director, Experience Design McDonald’s USA Corporation	As Director of Experience Design, Jeff employs human centered methodologies to conceive and simulate how customers choose to experience McDonald’s in the next 5-10 years. Jeff also helps the organization deliver better service experiences today at more than 33,000 stores around the globe. A genuine curiosity about people and technology and the ability to make connections gained from user insights inspires Jeff and his team to dig deeper to deliver strategic outcomes and generate excitement around new service initiatives. This ability to motivate teams and clients ultimately leads to new service models and product concepts that are actionable, brand building and help build the business. Jeff’s twenty years of experience in integrating design, consulting and innovation has provided him the dexterity required to lead diverse teams and drive change at leading professional service firms such as Doblin (now part of Monitor), VSA Partners, Arthur Anderson, Ignition and most recently, McDonald’s Corporation. Jeff holds a masters degree in Human Centered Design from the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Byron Stewart Owner/Theatre-based Consultant Dramatic Diversity/DD+D	Byron is an actor, director, consultant, facilitator, presenter, and owner of Dramatic Diversity/DD+D. For the past eleven years, Dramatic Diversity has provided theatre-based corporate training and diversity & inclusion consultation to many clients including BP/Amoco, Hyatt Hotels, Motorola, Northern Trust Bank, Brookfield Zoo, Ohio State University, Northwestern University, and PepsiCo. Byron has facilitated theatre-based product, service, and customer experience design workshops for McDonald’s (US & Global), Critical Mass, Sears, Walgreen’s, RTC, University of Chicago, DePaul University, Columbia College, and for Northwestern University’s Design for America Fellows. Byron is a local leader and presenter for Chicago’s Interaction Design Association (IxDA) and coordinator of the Chicago Service Jam ‘11. He is a co-founder of the Service Design Network Chicago. Articles on Byron’s workshops have been featured in the UXmatters and Experience Matters online magazines. His article, “Call Me a Cab, But First”, was published in the Service Design Network’s Touchpoint Journal. Byron was a featured speaker for Arizona State University’s Compete Through Service Symposium, World Design Capital Helsinki, Finland, IIT/ID’s Design Research Conference, Service Design Network’s Global Conference, UXMasterclass Conference, and DePaul University’s Continuing and Professional Education Program. Byron is lead instructor of the Ready section of Northwestern University’s STEM Communication Fellowship Program Ready, Set, Go. As a professional actor he has appeared at the Goodman, Northtlight, Court, and Black Ensemble theatres and received a Jeff Citation, Black Theatre Alliance Award, and an After Dark Award. He served as Artistic Director of A Real Read, Chicago’s African American LGBT performance ensemble for five years. He has co-starred in feature films and has done casting for award winning television series. Byron received his BFA degree from Howard University in Washington D.C.
Jay Clark Director, Creative Services Shared Marketing Services, Inc.	Jay leads the Creative Team and Media Personnel for the in-house advertising agency of Shared Marketing Services, Inc. Jay is responsible for creating strategic initiatives and executing targeted marketing to provide lift for Fortune 500 clients and their channel partners. Jay also leads the development of new tools and emerging vehicles for manufacturers and their channel partners in new media. Shared Marketing Services is a full service, integrated marketing solutions firm. For more than 25 years, Shared Marketing Services has worked with multi-unit, franchised, retail, and dealer/distributor companies to help optimize the ROI on their advertising spend. Their suite of online tools allows centralized marketing departments the ability to control their brands, messaging, and costs while providing local managers the flexibility to creatively target their customers and prospects. All of the solutions are custom tailored to clients' requirements. Jay is also partner and co-owner of SilverGrass Marketing, a company that offers guidance and technical solutions to help manufacturers with data-driven marketing and improved client communications.

Developing Ipad apps for Early Childhood Classrooms

DD+D was invited back, this month, to Columbia College's Visual Presentation class to deliver our Design Empathy workshop. The workshop was held at the Steelcase show room at the Mart.
The design brief for the project required the student designers to create  Ipad apps, and Ibooks for early childhood education teachers. Our goal was to help the student designers to empathize with the needs of all stakeholders including; teachers, young students. We created personas and acted out scenarios to understand the client's needs.

Here is the design brief, breakdown of project activities, and student designer feedback on DD+D session....

DESIGN BRIEF: developing Ipad apps for early childhood classrooms

New opportunities are constantly opening up in the various educational environments as digital technology and new media platforms emerge. In colleges and universities we’ve been using virtual classroom tools (blackboard, skype, basecamp, google docs, etc.) for more than 10 years to deliver material to students both synchronously and asynchronously. In elementary, secondary, and high school many of these tools are also used. However in the early childhood environment where children are learning very rapidly to do so many things from manipulating physical puzzles to developing crucial social skills, technology has not been as vital or necessary.

With the increase and growing sophistication of mobile technology, earlier access by more and more children, although certainly not all, and genuine curiosity with the devices and the apps/games they afford, we are witnessing a paradigm shift of technology down into the pre-school, kindergarten and early elementary school years. This simple phenomenon when combined with the emergence of intuitive authoring tools like Ibooks author and InDesign allow for educators to develop teaching tools for the ipad that augment established books and other support materials. The process can be fast and the results can be tested and refined right in the classroom.

As product designers we are trained to be generalists and to explore emerging opportunities like these through direct observation, interviews, and primary research posted on line or in journals.  In this project we will be collaborating with Early Childhood Education students to develop teaching scenarios for their classrooms. We will be using many of the visualization skills from previous assignments as well as new ones to develop scenarios that will lead to storyboards of interaction, and finally tasks/games that can be quickly built and tested on an ipad using ibooks author. The project will involve several stages and require interaction/collaboration with the Early Childhood Education students led by professor Mary Quest. Because the respective courses do not occur at the same time the groups will be communicating as much as possible through a range of cloud-based collaborative tools.

INITIAL BREAKDOWN OF ACTIVITIES:

Task 1:                      Setup collaborative space

Task 2:                      Review video documentation of student teaching (before 3.18.13)

Milestone 1:               Develop initial scenarios around a range of topics for review

Task 3:                      Get feedback from student teachers

Task 4:                      Bodystorming workshop withh DD+D

Milestone 2:               Create storyboards to define either existing problems or opportunities

Task 5:                      Transform storyboards into videos as communication tool (upload)

Task 6:                      Get feedback and refine scenarios.

Milestone 3:               Develop concepts for testing using ibooks author and ipads.

Student designers' feedback

"It was nice working in groups and coming up with personas and scenarios to put ourselves in other people's shoes."

"It helped get us to visualize the process of research. Also, really getting involved with it creates a better understanding.

"Exploring where the teachers and students are coming from and experiencing was a great way to do research."

"The workshop helps encourage all to step out of their own mind and into an empathetic state."

"It was informative yet entertaining and engaging."

"A great work environment to work and learn"

"Today's session was very effective. Empathy can be difficult. It was very helpful to learn some theatre tools to help."

"It was great to warm up and take on the empathy challenges. Stand up,sit down, moves my mind also body."