Design Inspire Platform
Design plays a vital role in economic development. Designers are needed to unlock the potential and create sustainable futures. Design education is a valuable asset at the same time it is costly and not accessible to all. Design is ever evolving which makes it a difficult landscape to traverse in, where there is so many overlaps that sometimes it becomes overwhelming for young designers.
Design Inspire (DI) is a mission-driven platform to create just & equitable futures by providing free and accessible Design Education & creating Design awareness. The DI platform enables designers to grow, discover and dive deeper into meaningful conversations with prominent contributors of the design industry. It provides exploration & exposure to design domains, ideas & learning. It is bridging the gap between theory, applications & practices. It focuses on learning for designers across all levels of experience.
Design Inspire is a one-of-its-kind platform by UXG, ValueLabs, that aims to motivate young designers and design teams globally and focuses on new domains of Design.
DI Platform Strategy
To cater to all the stakeholders appropriately user-centred design process and service design principles were applied. Objectives were understood to craft meaningful initiatives that can benefit and resonates with different stakeholders in the ecosystem. A stakeholder map was created representing the inter-relation among all the people that are part of the DI ecosystem. The stakeholders and users were mapped to the various DI initiatives based on their objectives.
Branding
The visual identity of Design Inspire Platform was based on the metaphor of a sun rising - a symbol of dispelling ignorance and spreading the light of knowledge. It also meant spreading awareness as well as the dispersion of ideas.
The letters D (Design) and I (Inspire) come together signifying interdisciplinary collaboration to create a spark and reveal the light of knowledge, awareness, possibility and creativity. The space between D and I signifies the reveal; the awareness. It serves as the origin of unique initiatives.
Planning & Organisation
Design Inspire Platform has multiple initiatives and consists of many events that culminate into an annual Conference. This requires a lot of planning and involves collaboration with multiple teams and stakeholders at different stages.
We used a service design approach to create user journeys and a blueprint to visualize all the events including the conference. Touch-points for each stage of the journey were mapped along with the corresponding stakeholders involved and their pain points. This blueprint helped the organising team understand the cross-functional relationships of events, teams and systems. As a result, the event planning and organization was simplified.
Planning for the event was an amazing effort in terms of collaboration and execution approach. Smaller teams were created within the UX Group, ValueLabs, to handle tasks related to specific verticals right from user journeys & blueprints, to social media presence and hosting of individual events. All teams worked individually while also working collaboratively on inter-dependent tasks to ensure that nothing was happening in silos. The entire team working on DI connected daily to discuss the updates, assess new perspectives and support the other teams when required.
Design Inspire's multitudinous platform expands to ideas, design journeys, inspirations, work and challenges of young designers worldwide and encourages us to grow with the spirit of service to the design community globally. It has created channels for holistic learning through its initiatives focusing on different aspects of learning. The initiatives are in a digital format, allowing it to reach participants in remote areas as well.
DI has transformed people’s lives by giving them hope & creative confidence. With each passing year it is expanding meaningfully to serve the Design community globally, opening opportunities for learning & employment.
Impact
2900+
Likes on posts
18,800+
Views of videos
7600+
Clicks on posts
300,000+
Total Impressions
The impact is assessed by conducting focused research groups & interviews. Impressions and comments received by the participants are also taken into consideration. Based on the feedback and continuous evaluations through design research and methodologies, strategies are created and implemented for continuous improvements. This has also led us to expand meaningfully and connect with diverse audiences and participants.
Design Inspire Platform is run by the User Experience Group of ValueLabs consisting of 40+ designers led by Kadambari Sahu SVP, Design. The collective experience of the various designers and issues identified were the basis of creating a platform to serve society & create equitable futures. The UX Group organises and manages the entire operations with the help of ValueLabs infrastructure. It collaborates with Designers Worldwide to create content and host meaningful events.
My Role
I was a part of the core team for Design Inspire and worked closely with the Kadambari Sahu (SVP, Design, ValueLabs & founder of DI). Co-created the roadmap, strategy and charted the vision & mission for the platform and helped expand it to new channels and segments. Created the brand story for the DI platform.
Planned, managed & organised the Talks, Conference & Designathon in 2020 & 2021 and was the editor for the yearbook in 2020 & 2021. Created the yearly roadmap, budget, event agenda, promotion plan, content writing, communication & coordination with stakeholders & the team.
To know more about the Design Inspire platform and its initiatives please visit the website.
Exhibitions
June 2022 | Good Design Show, the European Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, Greece
