Trestles work samples by Rebecca Horton

Together, We Go Farther

COMPANY BACKGROUNDER

Trestles: Cases & Deliverables Prepared by Trestles / November 2014

CASE STUDIES

Our prior work includes design projects, workshops, and business coaching sessions. We offer service to clients in the form of annual engagements, shortterm intensives, workshops and coaching bundles.

Deloitte GovLab Training A WORKSHOP ON LATERAL THINKING

“This workshop taught me some practical techniques that I can apply to my work with difficult clients. I loved the activity where we created our own lateral thinking tools.” -Workshop participant

In June of 2013, Deloitte hired Trestles to run a custom workshop introducing its 2013-2014 Gov Lab fellows to the topic of lateral thinking. Trestles’ cofounders led participants through a series of interactive exercises to train them in lateral thinking techniques and help them explore ways to apply lateral thinking to their everyday work. Like many of Trestles workshops, this workshop combined lecture-style teaching with “learning by doing” exercises and group discussion to help participants better translate the content of Edward DeBono’s scholarship into their own day-today activities and client work.

CASE STUDIES

2013 Summer of Design Coaching Advising and Mentoring Design Thinking DC’s Network In 2013 Design Thinking: DC launched a new offering, The Summer of Design (SOD). SOD is a multi-month program where teams of DC-based participants engage a local client on a project that employs design thinking tools to solve difficult, often intractable, challenges. Trestles partnered with DT:DC to deliver DT:DC’s first prototyping workshop as part of the Summer of Design curriculum and coached and mentored several of the SOD teams at various points throughout the summer. In 2014, DT:DC invited Trestles to once again join its SOD program leadership, serving as a workshop facilitator and designer-mentor.

Start-up Coaching A Multi-Month Project with an Early Stage Nutrition Business

“It has been so helpful for me to get this information out of my own head by working visually and collaboratively.” -Nicole Davidsohn, client

Trestles runs a variety of start-up coaching sessions as a regular part of its client work. Nicole Davidsohn, a DC-based personal trainer and nutrition expert engaged Trestles in January 2014 to help her envision and prototype a business focused on nutrition and healthy lifestyles. Trestles began work with Nicole through a 90-minute session to explore her business concept and later helped Nicole develop specific services, such as grocery store tours, and envision customer journeys for each one. From there, Trestles advised Nicole on pilots of her services, held de-brief interviews with pilot customers, and assisted with early-stage brand exploration. Nicole’s nutrition business is now “live” in DC.

CASE STUDIES

Veterans to Cybersecurity Challenge A Four-Month Design Project with the Education Design Lab

Workshop participants interacting with a wall-sized service blueprint.

Beginning in November 2013 a newly-minted non-profit, The Education Design Lab, engaged Trestles to lead one of three design challenges. The Education Design Lab uses design thinking to solve wicked challenges in K-12 and higher education. Our project focused around the issue of veteran transitions from military work to successful civilian careers. In this project, we conducted 13 user interviews, ran two day-long design sessions involving rapid design and prototyping activities, managed a collaborative “service blueprinting” workshop, and helped the lab develop five prototypes to garner funding.

Waters Avenue Revitalization Transform a City through a Catalyst Neighborhood

“This represents to me one of the many pieces we will have to put together in order for us to move forward.” -Insight gathered from “cultural probe” Rebecca and a SCAD colleague designed for this project

Prior to founding Trestles, Rebecca Horton participated in a pivotal community empowerment project as a graduate student at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia, a community still riddled with racial tensions and severely hit by the effects of the 2008 recession. Her work with ten SCAD classmates kicked off a series of design interventions in the community that continue to present. The work of Rebecca and her SCAD colleagues has been covered by local press in various articles including 2012 piece “New groups, new efforts focus on Waters Avenue corridor,” and by FastCompany in a piece entitled “What Art School Kids Can Teach Us About Urban Renewal.” Pictured to the left is one of the community research tools that Rebecca co-designed with a SCAD colleague.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK PROTOTYPING WORKSHOP

PARALLEL PLAY ACTIVITY

IDEATION ACTIVITY

PROMPT CARDS

Simple building game to “warm up” participants

Putting learning into practice

Used in a prototyping game we designed

POWERPOINT GLIMPSE

TEACHING SHOT

SIMPLE IDEA SKETCHES

Online at www.slideshare.net/rebeccaeliz/

Demonstrating value of interactive prototypes

Developed by workshop participants

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: EDUCATION DESIGN LAB STORYBOARDS AND INSIGHTS

TRI-MENTOR DESCRIPTION: In order to create more enticing opportunities for both peer and employer mentoring, George Mason will develop a project-based mentoring system within its new BS in cybersecurity program. This mentoring opportunity will build on an already-existing non-profit model for mentorship that exists at the high school level called The Future Project. HOW IT WILL WORK: For the period of one semester, senior students will work with an industry mentor and a freshmen student on a “passion project.” The freshmen participants will work on this project as a secondary learning component of one of their foundational courses, whereas senior students will take this course as the primary focus of one of their two “Advanced Design Project” requirements. The senior student and employer mentor will take the lead in designing the passion project and will customize tasks and learning opportunities for the more junior student, whose participation will be lighter than that of the senior student. Throughout the Tri-Mentor program, the senior student will serve as project director, managing the tasks of thefreshmen student, seeking advice from the employer mentor and keeping the team on track. Employer mentors will be required to dedicate approximately three hours per week to participating in the program, and must be based out of a local company and available to meet students at least two times per semester in-person and otherwise (at a minimum) available to meet the students over Google Hangouts or Skype once weekly. We believe that employers will be enticed to participate in this opportunity for multiple reasons: one to “give back” to the community, and two to recruit and vet top talent from local institutions and test out the potential fit of a senior student who may want to work for them after graduating.

OPPORTUNITY

I need a program that is adaptable to my pace and my lifestyle-which sometimes involve part-time work or a family.

What if we made the IT education experience more interactive and adaptable to students’ individual paces and lifestyles, allowing the course flow to be sped up or slowed down depending on a students’ need.

INSIGHT STATEMENTS

SAMPLE PROTOTYPE STORYBOARD

We developed several insight statements to drive a multi-month design process for the Education Design Lab. These insight statements represent key findings across ethnographic interviews conducted with veterans, employers, and students. We used these statements in design workshops to help stakeholders quickly develop user-centered solutions around the problems facing veterans seeking cybersecurity careers. The statement to the left (above) represents an actual insight whereas the statement to the right (above) represents a design prompt.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: RESTAURANT CONSULTATION

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THE SURGE SLIP-UP SITUATION 1. Prep cooks prepare food earlier in the day but do not prepare enough food. 2. People slowly start to enter The Coupe. 3. The prepared food starts to run out so line cooks must be taken off of the line to prepare more food. 4. As more and more people enter the restaurant, the kitchen begins to get backed up because not enough people are on the line. 5. The kitchen is now so backed up that the host must establish a wait because a sudden surge of people have come into The Coupe. 6. This causes customers to get angry because they do not like to wait, see that there are empty tables and are not getting the food they ordered (if they are already seating). 7. This also makes servers uneasy because they have empty tables are not not making money and are unable to fulfill orders that their already seated customers have placed. 8. The host must take the brunt of the customer complaints, but is powerless to help.

This graphic is based on a compilation of our staff interviews, research data, and shadowing observations. It represents a “best guess” at what is happening, which should be validated through additional kitchen observation and front of house observation. At the end of the day, we believe that better communication beween front of house and back of house staff could remedy this situation.

9. This impacts staff morale because they feel like they have no control over the situation- they eventually get burnt out and potentially qut and this negatively contributes to high staff turnover.

The Coupe staff are forgetful and they take too long to get me what I need. staﬀ interaction with customers

vibe 4

low key

upscale

the elements They do a good job controlling the elements

They don’t do a good job controlling the elements

food 7

I love the food

LIVE SKETCH WITH NARRATIVE: DIGITAL COPY In presenting research findings to one of our restaurant clients, The Coupe, we used live sketching accompanied by narration to articulate the restaurant’s biggest challenge when it came to interfacing with customers. Less than three months after delivering this presentation, the challenge was solved: the restaurant discontinued a 24/7 schedule and began closing every evening to allow more time for recovery and prep between the evening and morning shifts.

It’s always a disappointment

scale: 0-10 left to right

INSIGHTS BOOK SAMPLES Glimpse of our larger deliverable book.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP / INSURANCE INDUSTRY CLIENT

“I need more at-hand analytics and trends to do my job better and innovate our offering.” As the insurance industry becomes more competitive and diverse, Mike increasingly needs integrated data to make strategic decisions that will drive his company’s bottom line. He looks to Verisk to provide him with industry trends and aggregate information that will help his company become more knowledgeable and innovative.

Mike

IzE Al

HANCE EN Mike slices and dices data to suit his organizational needs. He selects data elements of interest and the frequencies with which he would like to access those elements, then prioritizes his

R TO NI

IDE EC

Based on inputs from the dashboard, Mike makes business decisions on strategies and priorities to drive his bottom line.

PERSO N

“the Middle Manager”

Mike reviews trends over time, referencing aggregated resources and at-a glance analytics.

Mike considers ways that he can improve his data consumption experience and explores opportunities for new types of insights by consulting with Verisk staff via his dashboard.

ATE ER

Over time, Mike’s dashboard gets smarter and more tailored to his long-term business objectives. Meanwhile, Verisk becomes his trusted partner, enabling Verisk’s staff to serve in an advisory role to help him explore new ways to make data-driven decisions.

* Perpetual Cycle:

Over time, this journey will repeat itself. This arrow is meant to draw attention to the cyclical, rather than one-time nature of Mike’s journey.

ONE OF THREE JOURNEY MAPS FOR AN ENTERPRISE APPLICATION Research & Analysis

Version: 0.1

Published: May 28, 2013

by: Phil Golub, Joe Sokohl, Rebecca Horton, Taz Kim, and Michael Rabjohns

Some information was redacted to protect client confidentiality. Visual design was completed in collaboration with Taz Kim, concept artist.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: WALL CHART PRESENTING CUSTOMER RESEARCH DATA

PRELIMINARY SKETCH

FINAL WALL CHART GLIMPSE Photo is cropped to protect work product confidentiality.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLE: KELLOGG FOUNDATION GRANTEE PERSONA

SLIDE DECK PERSONA

DETAILED PERSONA

Colleen was one of five grantee personas developed for the Kellogg Foundation in 2012 based on ethnographic interviews with Kellogg Foundation grantees in DC, Michigan, New Orleans, and Mississippi. Rebecca designed these personas based upon staff input in a collaborative session, built the digital articulations of these personas, and created “slide deck” versions of the personas for a quick overview in presentation settings.