‘From Digital to Design’: Wayne’s Deloitte Digital Connect programme journey
Wayne Wu is the Events & Administration Coordinator at the Windsor Fellowship. The organisation helps young people from under-represented groups along their education and career paths. This is her story of learning about the importance of design in the digital world.
At the start of the DDC programme the Fellowship saw three possible projects to use the support towards:
- Developing online content for their alumni (the initial preferred idea)
- Building a mentoring portal
- A new website
“I’m not techy” 🤷♀️
Wayne is quick to point out that she isn’t a ‘digital person’. She took on the project as the person at Windsor with the most capacity for something new. To her, when she started, digital meant digital marketing. That was Wayne’s first thought when she joined.
That changed when she met others on the programme. They were beginners too. She immediately felt less lonely and more relaxed.
Key moment 1: learning about design thinking 💡
Early on Wayne took part in a workshop on design thinking.
‘Design thinking is a non-linear process you can use for any design challenge. It helps you get comfortable with a problem, think about your users, prototype, test and refine. This workshop will give you the opportunity to learn the theory and the chance to put it into some practice with live examples.’ — workshop description
This destroyed Wayne’s idea that digital meant digital marketing. Suddenly a whole new world opened.
For the first time Wayne considered how to design — to create a digital thing — in a way that included the needs of their users. In the Fellowship’s case users meant the young people and programme partners who they support and work with.
Key moment 2: learning about digital inclusion💡💡
Then Wayne joined a workshop on digital inclusion. This was her biggest ‘Aha! moment’.
This could have been a difficult moment but Wayne was glad to have the realisation and the chance to reflect on what her organisation could do to make their digital offerings more inclusive.
Even better she saw that she was not the only one; every organisation in the workshop found being digitally inclusive difficult.
Wayne decided to act on this moment. She decided that whatever they would choose to focus on in this project, she would bring an inclusion lens to it too, wherever she could. That way more people would be able to get the benefit of its outputs.
Making a choice☝️
Faced with all this new knowledge, what was Wayne to do?
She took her new knowledge back to her manager and her team. They had a really good, informed discussion. They already knew their website was old, now they realised how poor its usability was, especially for mobile users.
They decided that a website redesign was the best thing to do next.
How Windsor chose a designer 👩🏾💻
Spurred on by the ability to focus on one project, Wayne asked the CAST team for advice on choosing a web designer. They directed her towards Dovetail, a directory of designers and developers experienced in working with charities.
Wayne dove into Dovetail and its listings. She used its shortlisting function and explored its sample briefs. They chose a designer and they started work. Two weeks in Wayne says the project is going well.
Other helpful things🙋♂️
Wayne talks about other things she found helpful on the programme.
- Broadening her understanding of other aspects of digital — through workshops on CRM, digital strategy, online privacy and running virtual meetings.
- Learning more of the language of digital
- Resources she was directed to by the CAST team
- The support and acceptance of the CAST team — when the Fellowship didn’t yet know what to focus their project on.
Good luck, Wayne!👏🏻
The Fellowship’s website redesign will end after the DDC programme. We hope that they and their users are happy with their new site and that Wayne’s new knowledge helps their work to grow.
