Goal:
Bring together college students from across the country to learn about human-centered design
Solution:
Plan a 3-day national conference hosted at U of I for over 50 students packed with fun and adventure
Impact:
Lasting friendships, important conversations, and stronger human-centered design skills
After working in the UI / UX industry for four years, I decided to put my skills to the test.
I would pass on my design-thinking skills to the next generation of designers through games, guest speakers, workshops, and pizza.
Midwest Meetup was a 3-day national conference at UIUC.
This April 1st to April 3rd, I brought together college students from across the country after 2 years of COVID-19 separation in an event called Midwest Meetup 2022. The conference was held with full safety precautions.
Each student was a member of a organization called Design for America which works to shape the next generation of social innovators (more of my work with them here). With over 40 studios across the country, here are the highlights when I invited five to visit.
Since this conference, The University of Cincinnati has hosted their own Midwest Meetup inspired by this one!
DFA UIUC member Sonia sneakily adds her name to the Networking Bingo scoreboard
Impromptu Karaoke during some downtime
In addition to free food and cool guest speakers, Midwest Meetup 2022 also had awesome activities to change students’ perspective on design and help them grow in their thinking.
Hosted in the Siebel Center for Design at Illinois, Midwest Meetup 2022 (MWMU) opened its doors to students from Washington University in St. Louis, Case Western Reserve University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Cincinnati, University of Notre Dame, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Though our attendees learned many important things over three days, I think that as organizer, I learned the most important thing: nothing goes quite according to plan.
At left is my personal copy of an agenda given to each attendee. Those quickly became obsolete as I moved things around to maximize time with guest speakers and activity engagement.
Another important learning was the value of group input.
Instead of activity transitions exactly at the hour (as planned), I surveyed each table asking “How much longer would YOU like to do this activity?”
Through this, I was able to plan the conference as it came. This lead to a much more free-flowing, participatory organization where attendees could feel more empowered in the weekend.
To get a better sense of the amazing weekend our attendees had, take a look at our program below:
In addition to logistics, catering, curriculum, moderating, and executing, I was also responsible for the graphic design! Our conference shirt below:
We had great conversations throughout the weekend!
I moderated two different guest speaker panels: “A Q&A with DFA” and “Empathy in the Professional World.”
I selected the speakers from very disparate backgrounds to give the attendees an array of perspectives on prevalent issues in design and research.
Our first panel engaged speakers on how their involvement with Design for America has helped them in their career.
Nametags are the first step to friendship!
Our first guest panel. Left to Right: Ally Merrett (me), Nicholas Paredes, Shamika Patil, Jake Fava
We transitioned this conversation: how to market yourself for your dream job.
Our second panel focused on empathy in the professional world and how it looks different in every field.
We had four faculty members from four different departments (Spanish, Design, City Planning, and Technology Entrepreneurship) share stories and answer questions about their careers.
Our brains needed a break after such thoughtful conversations… so we went to play with lasers!
One of the most exciting parts of the day was the time we spent in the Siebel Center Workshop! Students were taught how to use high-pressure laser cutters to make cubes with six different pictures.
After this, we moved to the industrial printers to make our very own stickers!
The design students were especially excited as they could bring some of their personal creations to life.
For those without pre-made designs, we held brainstorming sessions to figure out the perfect design for each attendee.
At right, the laser cutter etches the faces of the six attendees from the University of Cincinnati.
This was the perfect time for me to sneak away and make sure everything else was going according to plan:
I picked up our dinner, set up our main room for the rest of the day, and reviewed the instructions for the evening activity. This was also great downtime for me to go around to each group and get to know them and figure out how to improve the conference to their liking.
This made the conference that much more human-centered!
MWMU 2022 was a huge success.
This was in part due to the support I received from the University of Illinois Design for America UIUC studio. Members were often pitching ideas and asking how they could help.
I am also very thankful for all the universities making the long trek to Urbana-Champaign!
I could not have put on such an exciting and valuable weekend experience without everyone.
Time to say goodbye : (
Design for America National thought I did a good job, too! Their take on my leadership below:
“[The] UIUC DFA studio has distinguished itself as a creative contributor to our national network and as a leadership voice around DFA’s values of inclusion and collaboration through the design thinking process.”
Sharon Klotz, Executive Director of Design for America National
To prove what a good time we had, please enjoy these photos!
Alastair Merrett 