Informal Gathering - Opening Our Toolkit

Since I was lax in getting a December meeting scheduled and the holiday season can be a busy time, the December meetup is going to be an informal gathering at Hometown Harvest Kitchen. Right on Carroll Creek downtown.

The venue is cafeteria style so you can grab what you want - anything from a full dinner, to ice cream, to snacks, or coffee, beer, or wine - and join the group at the table to chat.
It will be a great time for newbies to come check out what we're all about and for some return members to talk about some projects ahead.

I also want to talk about a couple of real-life scenarios that we could take on in a possible upcoming Design "hack-a-thon." For December's meeting we'll just talk about what design tools we might use to solve our problem (and for new folks we can explain what those tools are and why we might use them in a particular situation).

The first potential project centers around improving the website of a local not-for-profit animal training organization: https://breakawayactiondogs.com/
We'll define the problem we're trying to solve and go over some options for assessing the site, like:

• Heuristic review
• User surveys/interviews
• Site mapping/journey mapping

The second project is a hypothetical that jumps out of the digital space and into the physical world: How can we reduce the number of hospital re-admissions and improve the healthcare experience for people in Frederick.
This is a broader challenge and may take some out of the box thinking about the approach. But. . . that's the fun!

Hoping everyone is enjoying the season. Looking forward to seeing people for a laid-back evening of creative thinking!