Austin Design Week Talk 2020 – Turning on a Dime: Pivoting Your Business to Empower Communities During Times of Crisis

In 2020, I organized a talk for the 5th annual Austin Design Week (November 9-13th, 2020) about Favor’s COVID-19 product and program work. My goal was to share best practices about how to create great products in times of crisis.

ADW 2020 Theme

They say the only constant is change, but truthfully, change is more of a curve— it speeds and it slows. And when change is rapid, (2020 comes to mind) the role and practice of design adapts. The old methods no longer produce new results and accepted truths no longer hold water. But it’s times like these that designers do what they do best: get creative.

The theme for Austin Design Week 2020 is about exploring the ambiguity that comes with change— discovering together what we can embrace, and how:

Embrace _______

With a blank after “Embrace,” the theme itself has a level of ambiguity. It’s open for all of us to provide our own intent and learnings. On one hand, “embrace” is about acceptance— it speaks to the role of design to find truth, adapt, and innovate. On the other, it’s about comfort— the importance of community, large or small. It’s about change, but it’s also about stability. What do we have that remains constant despite the change around us? How do we best support each other and our communities?

Whether it’s the unknown or the undeniable, a new reality or a new future, our community or ourselves— there’s always something we can embrace in times of change.

https://austindesignweek.org/blog/announcing-our-theme-for-adw20

TALK Description

In tech, rapid change is inevitable. But in rare instances, you hit inflection points where your business can be changed in ways that lift up your community. Many businesses have experienced some of these key moments during COVID-19 and other recent events in our communities and the world. In these moments, you have to decide to either maintain the status quo or pivot your product and service offerings to support the people around you.

At Favor, we’ve always been about delivery, but in 2020, we’ve been laser-focused on how to pivot our core offerings to support our fellow Texans.

This talk will focus on the challenges of designing products and services in these moments. We’ll focus on how we’ve risen to the occasion at Favor by walking you through a few case studies from our recent Products & Programs. Along the way, we’ll offer some key insights about how you might approach these kinds of challenges. 

How DID OUR TALK FIT with the theme "Embrace _"?

We’re focusing on helping as many people as possible in our local communities work, live, and thrive. We want every organization (for-profit tech companies like ours included) to own the responsibility they have to their communities. We have some key takeaways from how we’ve been able to rise to the occasion over the last few months. We’d love to share what we’ve learned about embracing ambiguity and being willing to listen to your community to discover the best ways to help.

See the ADW 2020 Schedule
VIDEO OF TALK COMING SOON!

In 2019, I organized a talk for the 4th annual Austin Design Week (November 4 - 8th, 2019). My goal was to focus in on how my team was designing persuasively for our independent contractors at Favor and the unique challenges that arise when you design for users that you can influence but don’t directly control.

Austin design week 2019 Theme

This year we will be curating programming around the theme "Make Space".

In 2017, we uncovered how we “Find Place,” and in 2018 we began to “Open Doors.” As we move into our fourth year of Austin Design Week, we invite everyone to “Make Space.” These themes build on one another, and bring us to a pressing yet simple question built for designers to answer: We're all here (whatever "here" means). Now what?

To make space requires us to not just create, but adapt. How do we remove barriers and set the conditions for everyone to work, live and thrive? What does it mean to build with intention for new ideas, for old ideas, for those who are frequently ignored and brushed aside? What spaces can we cultivate to learn, grow and center ourselves in equity as we continue to expand as a city, design industry and community?

https://austindesignweek.org/blog/make-space-for-adw19

TALK SUMMARY

The gig economy is now composed of 60 million workers and it's growing at an incredible pace. As designers, we must constantly ask how to best design for a completely flexible, on-demand workforce - users that we can influence, but don’t directly control.

At Favor, designing for our independent contractors is at the center of everything we do. The beauty of the rise of on-demand work is that people have the freedom to work when and where they want, but this presents unique business challenges that arise from increasing autonomy and flexibility among workers. 

This talk focuses on the challenges of designing for this space and includes tips about how to design a great and engaging customer experience when you can’t directly control the full user experience from end-to-end. We also touched on the legal constraints that make designing for a flexible workforce difficult.

How DID this fit with the theme "Make Space"?

We at Favor focus on helping as many people in our local communities work, live, and thrive as possible. There is a history of companies exploiting on-demand workers, though, so it was more important than ever that we design with the intent of growing and supporting this growing community of flexible workers and share what we learned. We believe that it’s possible to design for a flexible workforce without being evil and wanted to share these best practices with others.