Partnership Lead | Program Development | Judging Panel
As part of their 2016 UX Design Week, Adobe approached Oxfam as one of a number of potential non-profit organizations to partner with in piloting a design challenge with a focus on social benefit. I led the partnership for Oxfam, assembling a multi-disciplinary team across the organization that resulted in an engagement that piloted new products for Oxfam, as well as a basis for Adobe's future non-profit design challenges.
I assembled a multi-disciplinary team at Oxfam and led a series of brainstorming sessions to develop seven topics, or “prompts” for submission, and compile background research for each. Upon receiving our proposed topics, Adobe selected Oxfam as their partner for the event, and — citing the quality of the topics submitted — chose to include all seven in the exercise, rather than one, as originally intended.
The prompts we developed included difficult-to-solve issues such as getting people to think about supporting causes as part of their daily lives, rather than as an occasional transaction, closing the gap between the charity supporter and beneficiaries to increase impact, and erasing the hero/victim narrative that so often plays out in supporting social causes like Oxfam's.
The team conducted in-depth research, providing Adobe with both a great breadth and rich depth of information on each of the challenges. What did we know? What did we not know? What had we tried? What had worked? What hadn’t? What were our limitations? Data, data, data, and the kitchen sink.
Over 200 Adobe staff were broken into cross-functional teams of 8 to 10 and given one day to be briefed on their topic, review our research, come up with an idea, develop the solution, and submit a 3-minute video explaining their concept. Oxfam’s team was present to help provide more in-depth knowledge and background information, address questions, and give guidance at check-points.
The event with Oxfam was featured as the opening in an Adobe video describing their work with the public sector.
I led a five-person judging panel selecting the top concepts, which ranged from an ad campaign to a social networking app, to a user dashboard, to a monthly recipe and cultural subscription, and beyond. And while learning from the exercise itself and the building of the relationship were the primary goals for Oxfam, the event resulted in several being brought forward for further exploration, and in some cases, ultimate development.
Several senior staff at Adobe expressed that this had been the strongest and most rewarding Design Challenge they’d conducted to date, and Adobe went on to continue the exercise in 2017, soliciting input from Oxfam for further refining the challenge. Oxfam took away a number of ideas to further research as potential projects, as well as a methodology to take to large-scale projects and problem-solving. Several of the proposed solutions were researched further, including some that are currently in production.