I attended and presented at the 2011 UCDA Design Conference in Phoenix, AZ on October 16-18, 2011. I wanted to share a few key takeaways from some of my favorite sessions at the conference:

Creativity, Confidence & Collaboration

by Wil Heywood, Arizona State University

• This was probably my favorite session I attended, however it is really difficult to put down to words all of the creative concepts that Wil shared with us.
• My main takeaway is that one must be vulnerable to be creative, and you also must be confident enough to state your thoughts and expose yourself to being vulnerable to rejection.
• Wil also shared with us some interesting ideas about how to ‘force’ collaboration among groups; he used his students as an example. He puts them into small groups, gives them a difficult problem, and then has them solve it in ten days. The students hate the project, but by the end of it they have gained better social awareness, as well as self-management skills by being forced to collaborate with others.

Bridging the Gap: Building Design Strategy on Marketing Research Data

by Elizabeth Scarborough, SimpsonScarborough

• Elizabeth shared with us that your brand should never (ever) be deviated from. Once you pick your brand, you have to stick to it no matter what; if you or other stakeholders don’t commit to it then you lose the impact of that brand immediately. All stakeholders on your campus must use the brand; if they do not like it, they must find their niche within that brand and figure out how it works for them, instead of deviating from it.
• She also shared some great examples of other universities she has worked with, namely American University and Thomas Edison College.
• American University initiated a new campaign called WONK (which is “know” spelled backwards). This campaign labels their audience as wonks – someone who knows something backwards and forwards. This is a very original campaign and is definitely worthy of further investigation.
• Thomas Edison College went from traditional spotlight-style advertisements to more modern, typography-heavy ads. These ads were very popular with prospective students and those in the younger demographics, helping them to better reach younger audiences. While the ads were not as well-received overall as the traditional spotlight ads, they were very popular with this particular demographic and therefore were very successful in helping to recruit new students.

My presentations

I presented two general sessions at this conference on Sunday, October 16. My morning session was a new version of my presentation on Transitioning Alumni Magazines from Print to Web and my afternoon session was on Ten Tips for Creating Online Video.