This job or that job? That project or this one? Stay at home with a favorite book or go out and experience something new surrounded by friends? Austin is an amazing city, filled with endless creative and cultural opportunities. The bad news: in our increasingly busy and fast-paced lives, the boundless decision-making can feel overwhelming. How do we stay true to our values in our choices when there is so much opportunity, but seemingly so little time to slow down and reflect?

In this year’s ADW17, the theme of “Finding Place” calls us to join together to find space and time to focus our creative energies on the things that matter most to us personally, professionally, and as a community.

Design is a powerful process for defining intention and mapping how to get from idea to real-world results. In this workshop, join fellow creative thinkers and learn how to apply the design process to guide decision-making in your personal and professional life. We’ll create opportunity to revisit this grounding experience again and again with hands-on time-capsule building, resulting in a tangible take-home artifact that encourages ongoing focus and reflection.

Facilitators: Laura Galos, Maryanne Lee, Samara Watkiss

Laura Galos is the Design Research Lead on the B2B Innovation team at LegalZoom in Austin, Texas. Her work focuses on building empathy with small business owners, helping her team derive new insights and ideas from the research, and creating solutions that give small business owners the support they need to achieve their vision of success. Laura has previously worked at IBM with the Power Systems team, and on projects centered on aging and family dynamics.

Maryanne Lee is the Design Manager on the B2B Innovation team at LegalZoom. The insights surfaced in her work help to frame new problems, inform ideation, and generate new concepts that create value for small business owners as they start and grow their businesses. Before joining LegalZoom, Maryanne led design research and strategy initiatives at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Global IT to surface new opportunities for enterprise solutions. She brings to the team a background in interaction design, social entrepreneurship, marketing and advertising.

Samara Watkiss arrived at human-centered design and design strategy by pursuing the most inspiring aspects of her work as a set designer, pedal-powered machine builder, graphic designer and refugee-liaison and asking how all of these are connected. That question lead her to move to Austin and study at Austin Center for Design. She has worked for design consultancies, tech startups and most recently as an independent consultant.