Playing Deck of Cards
Large scale collaboration of 40 designers across 19 cities around the world to bring joy and connection through art during the pandemic
The Problem
The pandemic has forever altered the manner in which we live, socialize, and work. The design field by its definition requires co-creation, collaboration, creative minds together iterating, and brainstorming in person. In a locked down world it became evident to me and other designers that we were experiencing the pain point of how to design in a virtual world while maintaining the focus on the people aspect of our work. Another major pain point, was how can we teach new and existing designers how to be masters of their craft at IBM, in a virtual world. How can we best optimize the career learning experience without burning out designers with endless zoom meetings.
The mission behind this project, was to find a way for designers at IBM who were participating in a 6 week intensive design bootcamp to connect meaningfully by create something amazing. The Patterns bootcamp in the summer of 2020 welcomed designers from all walks of life and professional backgrounds. From college grads, to IBMers making a career switch, to experienced designers wanting to coach others.
My Role
Led the entire project as lead UX designer with the help of two design colleagues. My role focused on the creation of this project, finding funding, organizing participants, setting up structure for design, leading design workshops focused on developing a theme, purpose, and branding for this playing deck of cards.
Cross Functional Team
1 Lead Designer/ Project Lead (me)
1 UX Designer
2 Graphic Designer
1 Design Operation Lead
1 Program Manager
Panel of Distinguished Designers (for approval)
IBM Legal Team (for approval)
The Process
1. Background Research
Researching large scale virtual projects others have done in the past.
Literature review on articles about working, collaborating, and connecting during a pandemic.
2. Corporate Approval
Creating a project plan
Budgeting
Exploring vendors to print the cards
Getting buy in from stakeholders such as executives and leaders
3. Interactive Brainstorming Session
Gathered all the designers and stakeholders to brainstorm design prompts to identify the design theme. Led a design thinking workshop on mural to document our ideas.
4. Designing card template and instructions
Designed card template on Adobe Illustrator for our designers to use for each suit to create a design standard and cohesiveness for the deck.
Created a design buddy system to be inclusive of non-visual designers. Our team wanted this experience to be as inclusive as possible and some of our designers were intimidated by the high level of art needed to design cards. We paired strong visual designers with content designers and research designers to co-create cards so everyone could design a card.
5. Design Review and Legal Approval
Each card was reviewed by our team in collaboration with executives and the legal team. This was to ensure that no designs violated intellectual property or copyright.
Our designers were instructed to not design any characters, fan art, brands, etc but rather to come up with original designs.
6. Develop card decks and shipping
Coordinated the printing and distribution of all card decks around the world.
Interactive Brainstorming
We wanted this project to be as collaborative and inclusive as possible. We began trying to understand what the designers needed from this experience and how to make it fun. The brainstorming session started with prompts covering what our design theme should be and the format of the asset. We then began to group and synthesize similar ideas to see which bigger themes emerged.
Synthesizing
The 3 of us main designers leading the project came together to synthesize the ideas of the other designers. We brainstormed 14 theme names and then collectively narrowed down theme names to 8 options and voted on them. The winning theme was “Finding comfort in the little things”
The themes were narrowed down to 8 options. We voted and “finding comfort in the little things” won as the name of our theme.
Card Template or the Design Process Itself
A key component of leading this project was creating standardization and clear guidelines for all designers to easily design no matter where in the world they were.
Building a deck requires strict specifications in terms of sizing of cards, colors, themes, and formatting so all cards would print with the highest quality possible. We outlined the following guidelines to streamline the design process.
All designers were asked to sign up for a specific card and suit. We showed some examples of how a designer may use the number or the shape of the suit in their design, symmetry, reflection, grouping of objects on their card to create a powerful story within their card.
We created a template for the card outline, the shape of the suits, the font and style of the numbers to create a consistent look throughout the deck.
Each designer was encouraged to come up with a creative title for their card and this was included in the booklet of contributors at the end of the deck.
All cards were reviewed by the lead design team, design fellows/leaders, and legal teams before being approved for final printing.
Outcome
We were able to pull off this global design project in 1.5 months and ship the decks across the world. All our designers, sponsors, and supporters in the broader design community were given a physical token of joy that extends beyond just the physical asset. People were happy to produce a collective deck in a world torn apart by the pandemic where in person interactions were replaced by exhausting zoom/screen fatigue.
Across the world designers with the deck would share the artwork and/or play card games with roommates, family, friends they were quarantining with. Here are some pictures designers took with their decks featuring what inspired their designs.
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together”