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A portfolio for
design Research and strategy
My Story
Research / Strategy
Workshop Facilitation
Prototyping / Developing
Visual Design
Published Works
MY STORY
Being an Entrepreneur
& Learning Design Process
I co-founded a design studio focusing on B&B branding years ago. Like
other entrepreneurs, we saw an opportunity to provide our service to
improve those businesses. Our studio was successful because every B&B
business needed a website or other visual design products to thrive in this
technology driven age.
However, I knew web design services were not the best and the only answer
to the challenges those business owners faced. I kept asking myself the
same question: What can design do beyond making graphics and logos?
How can we serve businesses with solutions for their sustainability? It
wasn’t until I invested in a degree to study design processes that I found
the answers to those questions and my passion for design.
When I look back now, I find I have transformed my perspective from being a graphic designer to a design strategist. I
believe design can not only make things more pleasant but
also serve as a holistic approach to problem solving.
I have been working on projects with startups and adopting the design
process to identify problems, synthesize data, and visualize information.
Now, years later, I am answering those questions here by practicing design
to make a social impact.
A business model’s current state mapping with a startup in Philadelphia.
Thesis Project: THE BRIDGE 2014
Designing a Tool to Activate Mindsets for
Behavioral Changes / THE BRIDGE 2014
Document Link
Industry : Culture, Education
Project length : 12 month
Area of focus : How learners can activate their mindset to adapt new
cultural norms?
Design method : Boundary object, ideation, improvisation, data
visualization, stakeholder map, SWOT, future back
wards, card sorting, co-design, rapid prototype.
Research
In this thesis project, The Bridge, utilizes design tools and methods for
cross-cultural interaction and group collaboration. it addresses issues
that most international students experience; they have self-identified as
passive learners and possess high anxiety from cultural barriers. Thus,
this project started by using a boundary object (a LEGO mini-figure
interview board) to reduce students’ anxiety during the interviews.
Research / Strategy
“Mindset to Behavior Learning Path” was developed to
explore the learning process across ex/in-ternal world.
Thesis Project: THE BRIDGE 2014
Designing a Tool to Activate Mindsets for
Behavioral Changes / THE BRIDGE 2014
Data collected from interview boards
Sense-making
It was an iterative process between research and sense-making that
included several workshops, interviews, and data synthesis. In one
workshop the future backward method helped students to identify their
needs as a group. Later, in a co-create workshop, students brainstormed
the ideas for a reminder that has both cultural and personal elements.
Implementation
In the final stage of this thesis project, a toolkit with a self-reflection
board and a reminder was tested with international students and
instructors.
Outcome
Overall, this project opened a conversation about the underlying communication issues that international students are facing. During the selfreflection segment of the tool, some international students addressed
how it helped them to know themselves better. Later, this project was
supported by the DSI program at UArts for its further development.
Ptototype testing
Research / Strategy
The Committee of Seventy 2013
Designing with a Good-Government Think Tank
The Committee of Seventy 2013
Industry : Public Service
Project length : Three month
Area of focus : Volunteer engagement in Election Protection Program
Design method : Contextual interview, role-play, 3D mapping, workflow
chart, service map, rapid prototype, survey.
Research
In this three-month long project we worked with the Committee of
Seventy on improving their Election Protection Program. Interviewing
volunteers and staff who contribute to this program from the outset
helped us to identify opportunities to make change in this more than
one-hundred year old organization.
Sense-making
We visualized the workflow together with our stakeholders by introducing
the design tools. We also conducted a role-play workshop to facilitate
conversation on different scenarios with volunteers whose experience
could inform further actions for improvement.
Implementation
On Election Day, we implemented prototypes to help volunteers
performed their services better: a paddle with a map, a volunteer’s
badge, a volunteer’s guide and a poster of a public survey. Finally, we
provided documentation of actionable solutions and a presentation on
our design process to the Committee of Seventy staff.
Outcome
Our client had very positive feedback from their volunteers after the
role-play workshop for volunteer training and design implementation on
Election Day. After experiencing those different ways to actively engage
with volunteers, the Election Protection Program decided to incorporate
them into their program.
Research / Strategy
Role-play session in the workshop
Process mapping
Prototype implementation
One of the prototype for volunteers
Beirut Design Week 2013
Design in Translation Exploring Trust and Design in Beirut 2013
Industry : Design, Culture
Project length : One month
Area of focus : Exploring trust and design in Beirut
Design method : Boundary object, Generative interview, Rapid prototype, KJ sorting,
Brainstorm, Data synthesize, Data visualization
Research / Sense-making
In the summer of 2013, as part of Beirut Design Week, my colleagues and I travelled to
Lebanon for a design research project exploring the translation of design methods and
tools across cultures. We conducted two community workshops to co-design and develop
Beirut-specific boundary objects to interact with public discussion on the sensitive
topic of trust.
A boundary object for sense-making
Research / Strategy
Ptototype testing
Ideation session in the workshop
Prototype implementation
Implementation / Outcome
By implementing boundary objects created from workshops:
1. Trust in a time of need – a street voting illustration. 2. Trust timeline.
3 Online survey, we were able to engage people, raise conversation
and gain insight into the theme of trust in their lives. In the end of the
project, we visualized our findings in a poster and had a conversational
presentation as a part of the Beirut Design Week conference.
1199C Healthcare Workers Union 2013
Co-design with 1199C Union A Training and Upgrade Fund 2013
Industry : Healthcare Union, Education
Project length : Three month
Area of focus : Improve the visibility of Training and Upgrade Fund’s
services for union members
Design method : Boundary object, data visualization and synthesize,
co-design, KJ sorting, persona, 3D mapping, role-play, weekly report.
Research
The project cooperated with 1199C Healthcare Workers Union Training and Upgrade Fund and focused on improving the visibility of their
educational services for union members in the healthcare system. In
the exploration phrase of the design process, we brought in design
tools to engage members to talk about their experience.
Sense-making
Furthermore, we facilitated workshops with the Training Fund
that mapped out findings, issues, and funneled down the problem
between members and their usage of the Training Fund service. In
the second workshop, we co-designed with our clients to come up
with possible solutions for their service. Materials were prepared for
participants to put their thoughts into prototype and were presented
to one another.
Implementation
After the co-design workshop, we refined ideas and implemented
them in the different context of promoting their service :1. A set of
physical outreach tools, 2. A online promotional Video.
Research / Strategy
Affirnative mapping
Co-design workshop
3D mapping for current service
Prototypes from co-design workshop
Outcome
Finally, we presented our findings and recommendations to the Training and Upgrade Fund. It included
deliverables of refined prototypes and suggestions
for future actions. In this project, our client not
only showed their excitement by participating in
workshops, but also took our recommendations in
the end. It set up a positive partnership for a later
two-year collaboration.
The HUB Meeting and Collaboration Center 2012
Designing a Future Co-working Space “The HUB” 2012
Industry : Working space, Service design
Project length : Three month
Area of focus : Operate a co-working space in a meeting room rental
business model.
Design method : Contextual interview, customer journey map, card
sorting, Data visualization
Research / Sense-making
My team and I worked with this organization to design a new venue for
people who require office space outside their own companies. Before
jumping into designing the physical space, we started the project
by understanding our stakeholders and their clients, their needs for
the future new space, and the services they provide. We conducted
contextual interviews with employees and analyzed the current service
model. During the design research process, we identified the major
obstacle of getting front-line employees and staff on the same page.
This was critical for the project to move from the current service model
to a future one.
Implementation / Outcome
By presenting the research outcome at the end of the project, we
learned the important lesson--that it’s necessary to walk our clients
through the design process and demonstrate its value along the way.
Setting the participatory project tone from the beginning by “designing
with them” instead of “designing for them” is the key for introducing
design thinking into an organization.
Research / Strategy
A customer Journey Map
Images Sorting with interviewee
Germantown Town Hall Community 2014
Exercise: empathy mapping
A Collaborative Design Project with
The Germantown Town Hall Community 2014
Industry : Community Engagement
Project length : Two weeks
Area of focus : Germantown residents’ collective vision to future
Germantown Town Hall
Design method : Rapid prototype, empathy map, axis tool, story mapping
Exercise: story mapping
Exercise: choose values from Axis maps
Workshop Facilitation
Background
The graduate students and I were invited by DSI faculty members
at UArts to design and facilitate a workshop with the Germantown
Town Hall Collaborative. Germantown Town Hall (GTH) is a city-owned
property built in the 1920s, but that has not been used since the late
1990s. The purpose of this workshop was to bring the Germantown
community together to create a set of guiding principles for the re-use
and redevelopment of the building.
Process
The team designed a series of activities to embody residents’
collective values through conversations. With around thirty Germantown
participants, we facilitated the sessions with story mapping, Axis tool
and empathy mapping during the workshop. Each of the exercises led
participants to share their stories, experiences and visions for GTH.
Later, the information collected from these three exercises were briefly
summarized by the team and presented in the end of the workshop.
The participants’ collective values mainly suggested a hybrid-functional usage of the Town Hall, a preservative redevelopment to it and a
sufficient employment of sustainable material.
Center for Teaching & Learning 2014
Current State
Steps lead to Heaven
Heaven State
Hell State
Ways to Enhance Class Engagement Workshop Center for Teaching & Learning 2014
Industry : Education
Project length : One hour
Area of focus : How might we better engage students with their learning?
Design method : Future backwards
Background
Jordan Shade, Vrouyr Joubanian, and I had a chance to conduct an
one hour workshop with educators in the Center for Teaching & Learning at The University of the Arts. We adopted a design method named
“Future Backwards” for the experience educators to make sense of
their collective goals, hopes, and fears. Participants in three groups
focused on the following topics: 1. Student to student relationships
& collaboration, 2. Critique and presentation culture, 3. Faculty and
student relationships.
Process
Each group wrote descriptions for their “current state” on post-it
notes and identified the most significant event in the immediate past
that shaped their current state. All the descriptions posted on the wall
needed to reach group’s consensus through discussion. Later, each
group repeated the current state process for an impossibly good and
bad future (heaven state/hell state). By working through each step
backwards from the heaven and hell state to current state, participants
identified the significant events that might lead them to a future of
heaven or hell.
Workshop Facilitation
FastFWD program (Good Company) 2014
Orientation workshop : interview with a body board
Designing an Orientation for Entrepreneurs FastFWD program (Good Company) 2014
Industry : Business, Service
Project length : One week
Area of focus : Design a orientation activity for Entrepreneurs
Design method : ideation, rapid prototype, KJ sorting, storytelling
Data synthesize
Workshop Facilitation
designing an orientation
Background
This workshop was the first activity in the three-month-long FastFWD
program that was designed to support entrepreneurs in launching
their business. This orientation workshop was aimed towards helping
entrepreneurs get to know each other better while experiencing design
methods.
Process
Before we planned the orientation activity, we tried to understand our
audience, and learn about the entrepreneurs’ needs, fears, motivations
and inspirations. Then, as a group, we brainstormed ideas to inform the
goal of the orientation workshop. The tool we implemented later was a
“body board” used for entrepreneurs to interview each other with a list
of questions. After they interviewed each other, a third entrepreneur
interpreted the “body board” for the group. This activity not only provided
a chance to demonstrate an interview technique, but also collected data
from those entrepreneurs to structure the next design activity.
Fox Design Challenge 2013
An Annual Civic Innovation Competition Fox Design Challenge 2013
Industry : Multi-disciplinary design, Competition
Project length : One day
Area of focus : Design solutions that could bring changes to people’s
lives in Philadelphia
Design method : Observation, image sorting, AEIOU, user scenarios,
ideation, mock up.
Ideation
Workshop Facilitation
Identify an area of focusing
Background
The Fox Design challenge is an annual civic innovation competition
to transform great ideas into actions. This day-long design challenge
brought over one hundred students from different programs at Temple
University, University of the Arts and Philadelphia University to develop
rapid prototyping solutions for problems occurring in Philadelphia
neighborhoods.
Process
By following the design process, participants brought the data collected
from their research trips from days before the challenge. We employed
design methods to make-sense of the information and brainstorm ideas
for the opportunities we identified through the process. Facilitating
multi-disciplinary collaboration proved a significant learning experience
for me as a designer.
ESLI Program @ UArts 2014
Co-design with Educators in ESLI program
@The University of the Arts 2014
Industry : Education
Project length : Two month
Area of focus : Class engagement and self-reflection learning
Design method : Co-design, mapping, storytelling, visualization
Research
The design tool used an interactive object to externalize thoughts and
served as a reminder to help students change their mindset. It was tested
with international students at the University of the Arts. From collected
data, we discovered that one of the touch points, where students felt most
challenged, was when they first arrived in the U.S. It made students in the
English as Second Language program in the right context.
Sense-making
ESLI educators and I identified the opportunity in their writing class to
incorporate my design. We started a co-design session to create a new
version of design tool: a series of timeline mapping activities.
Implementation
The timeline mapping tools were used in the ESLI writing class for two
semesters. Students were asked to organize their thoughts, visualize their
experience, and share their stories in class.
Outcome
Instructors and students both gave positive feedback:
1. This activity improved class engagement.
2. It helped students to reflect on their experience and produce in depth
responses.
3. It provided a way for students to know each other better. Some of the
students kept using the tool after the class.
Workshop Facilitation
The future map
The present map
The past map
Design Sprint 2013
Design a Public Conversation Design Sprint 2013 Video Link
Industry : Design, Public conversation
Project length : One week
Area of focus : Create a public conversation in Philadelphia city
Design method : AEIOU, visualization, ideation, rapid prototype.
Research / Sense-making
After an observational trip in the city, we used the “AEIOU” method to
make sense of the information. It led us toward an opportunity to
create a public conversation about another sense of citizenship. Later,
we brainstormed ways to make this conversation happen and decided
on a feasible one: A kindness exchange box.
Implementation / Outcome
Utilizing the design process we sparked a conversation in the center
of City Hall. During one day prototype testing, we heard stories from
citizens and built awareness of being related to others in this city.
Workshop Facilitation
Design Methods Tool 2013
Support Works with Design Process Design Methods Tool 2013
Industry : Design
Project length : One month
Area of focus : Design a physical tool for design process facilitation.
Design method : Rapid prototype, Second hand research, Ideation
Prototype / Test
Discover Design is a design method tool, the product of a collaborative
effort of designers: Nidhi Jalwal, Jordan Shade, Vrouyr Joubanian, and
myself. The tool is meant to be used to support working through the
design process. Methods of discovery, sense making and enactments
help teams, communities and individuals create meaningful changes in
their process, environment and products.
Workshop Facilitation
Data Visualization 2013
Data Visualization 2013
Data Visualization plays a key role in conveying messages and
information to people involved in the design process. Also, it allows
me to organize information in a way in which the audience is able to
understand it in the context of a complex system.
Data visualization for customer satisfaction in United Airlines
Workshop Facilitation
Process visualization from workshop with Jonny Goldstein
Visual Design 2006-2014
Visual Design - Graphic & Logo
Graphic design for Red House Theater & Nokia promotional material
My graphic and logo design experience included clients from fashion,
music, commercial, manufacture industry and historical preservation
organizations. In some cases, it required a series of design products
that included a logo, website and promotional materials. In other
cases, the visual design could be the representation of graphics in a
physical space.
Logo Designs
Window display design for JUST-SHIN IMAGE Corporation
Workshop Facilitation
Link : My Journey Maps Facilitation Guide & Printable Tools
Ideas-to-Acts Roadmap 2014
Ideas-to-Acts Roadmap
Model & Project Planner 2014
During the fellowship in the master of Design for Social Impact program,
I further developed my graduate thesis work through designing and
testing a conceptual / behavioral / pedagogical model with educators
and entrepreneurs. This roadmap planner aimed to provide a path
for turning great ideas into actions. Meanwhile, it tracked the learning
points along with prototype testing that informed the next idea with
sustainability.
Link: A Roadmap Leading Ideas to Acts
Ideas-to-Acts Roadmap
Published Works
An Open-source Design Tool for Educators 2014
My Journey Maps:
Facilitation Guide and Printable Tools 2014
My Journey Maps contains timeline mapping tools that aim to help
international students develop, organize and share their thoughts
without being constrained by their current language capacity. The
activities have been designed to meet international students’ needs
for expressing their ideas in an active learning environment.
Link : My Journey Maps Facilitation Guide & Printable Tools
Facilitation Guide for My Journey Maps
Stats
Activity by Steps
Suggested time : 40- 90 Minutes
Level of difficulty : Moderate
Participants : Students
Materials needed : Colored pens/markers, long roll of
paper, colored masking tape, glue sticks, printables.
Keep one key on the timeline table
and the other stapled/glued to the bus.
Room Setup & Tools
1. A long table covered with paper
2. Color tape or sharpies (for drawing timeline)
3. Printed buses (letter size, for each student)
4. Key I (people : friend, family, teacher, artist…etc.)
5. Key II (the crucial “experience”.)
Essential Questions
How can students learn about themselves by
connecting the dots from the past?
Before Starting
1. Metaphor: explain what a metaphor is and how it
can be used in writing a journey/autobiography.
2. Provide the context of traveling to a new environment by using the metaphor of a bus.
Published Works
Step 1. Introduce the tool
Timeline
This is where students will note the years, people, or experiences
that have influenced them, giving a details or descriptions on
the timeline paper on the table.
Bus
Each student is the driver of their bus. This is a metaphor for
their life. Student should put their name and draw an image of
themselves on it.
Keys
These are used to represent people and experiences that
influenced the students from their past. Ask each student to
identify people that influenced them in different stages of his/
her life. Once he/she decides who will get on their bus at each
important time, they should put the names of these people
on the keys. Keep one key on the timeline table and the other
stapled/glued to the bus.
Step 2. Model the tool
Demonstrate how to map out your past on the timeline. It is
useful for the teacher/facilitator to do this as an example of
what brought them to their present.
Step 3. Create your timeline map
Students work individually on their timeline.
Step 4. Share
Students share their own timeline stories by taking their
buses to the start of timeline. The other students listen and,
if time permits, ask questions to gain clarity about the details
of the past story.
Step 5. Reflect
Students will be prompted questions to reflect on their learning
experience from the activity. They also will discuss what they
liked most, what was challenging, and how the map will help
in writing their autobiography. Also, the buses generated from
students’ past timeline will be the takeaways for them and can
act as evidence of their own learning experience.
MY
JOURNEY
MAPS
FACILITATION GUIDE
& PRINTABLE TOOLS
By Min Wen Yeh
A class engagement & self-reflection tool
co-designed with the ESLI program at UArts.
Copyright © 2014
Min Yeh
(215) 588-8061
minwenyeh@gmail.com
Website : minyeh.com
Thank You. Desgin by Min Yeh ©2015