EXPERIENTIAL TRAINING

Hack Your Creativity

My Contribution

Product strategy • Research • Experiential design • Visual design • Facilitation • Coaching • Marketing • Content creation • UX writing

Tools

Figma • Trello • Mural • WebEx

  • NDA prevents saving this information outside private presentation.

About

Hack Your Creativity is an experiential training program designed to help participants develop creative practices that sustain inspiration, fuel passion, and prevent burnout.

As the newest edition to a suit of emotional intelligence and mindfulness training, this program focuses on developing multidimensional awareness, gaining insight into experience, and getting into clear, aligned action through creative experiments.

Hack Your Creativity

Opportunities

1

Create community connection during a time of disconnection due to the pandemic.

2

Market innovation and thought leadership in creativity, emotional intelligence, and mindfulness in the workplace.

3

Discover new virtual methods of engagement and interaction that support education and collaboration.

Product Problem Statement:

The current state of employee support for creative burnout and recovery puts the onus on the individual to independently assess and intervene, leading to social isolation during burnout and recovery and eventually attrition. Hack Your Creativity will provide employees with an interpersonal training experience (assessment, education, live practice), ongoing group support, and leadership opportunities through facilitation.

Initial Challenges

• How might we integrate best practices from positive psychology and trauma recovery into a workplace training?

• How might we build community support outside the training room?

• How might we determine scope while breaking new ground in the marketplace?

• What practices and resources are participants already using?

• How might we create sustainable cadence while fully committed to client-facing projects?

• What program structure supports participants’ need to pivot to client-facing work?

• How might we integrate with other corporate emotional intelligence training?

• How to best collaborate with facilitators of other corporate trainings?

What I Did

  • Synthesized 3 years of qualitative and quantitative research in creativity, innovation, burnout and recovery, positive psychology, and mindfulness to create personas.

  • Applied research findings to content creation, training structure, and activity design.

  • Performed usability testing through individual and paired task analysis and individual and group interviews, applying participant feedback to continuous iteration.

  • Created SharePoint site to serve as a community-driven resource hub allowing participants to access all course and supplemental materials.

  • Facilitated live workshops and standups.

  • Developed leadership opportunities for graduates and trained the in facilitation.

  • Collaborated with internal leadership teams in development and marketing.

Presentation Design

Engaged empathy and clear signifiers help “create the container” for the group.

Complex psychology is visualized simply to reduce cognitive load, increasing retention.

Mini activities fuel interpersonal engagement and promote self-reflection.

Activity Design

Defined & translated learning objectives

Tested full group & individual activities

Program Design

  • Introduce foundational recovery practices.

  • Promote meaningful interdepartmental cultural connection.

  • Experiential skill practice

  • Peer leadership opportunities

Tier 1: Workshop Intensives

  • Expand upon foundational recovery practices.

  • Offer new methods of inspiration and fueling.

  • Active testing of new materials.

  • Opportunity for continuous cohort feedback.

Tier 2: Spark Sessions

  • Weekly peer-led stand-ups.

  • Pairing on specific topics of interest.

  • Highly flexible allowing participants to adapt participation to needs and responsibilities.

Tier 3: Continuous community support

Deep Dive: Participant-driven training

Short research and testing sprints throughout development kept participants’ feedback at the forefront leading to:

  • Continuously curated content and activities

  • Clear guidance for product road-mapping

  • Quick integration across departments

  • Ultra-rapid socialization across departments and levels of leadership

Final Solution

  • Participants reported increased engagement in prevention and recovery activities, leading to increased feelings of purpose, connection, competency, and inspiration at work.

  • Participants reported applying learnings within their teams and on projects.

  • New interdepartmental connections were created, connecting participants to a larger sense of community at work.

  • High cross-departmental interest translated to classes filling within 24 hours of marketing.

I’d love to learn more about what you’re working on, what the vision is for the future, and how we can collaborate to create something truly amazing.