Breaking Barriers
Design The Next Step (DTNS) is ING’s one-day, annual design conference. Yes, you read that right: ING, a traditional bank, is behind a design conference!
How did that happen? A few years ago, designers at ING realised that something was missing. We were all active within our design communities and attended conferences, design events and meet-ups and while we felt inspired by seeing beautiful slide decks with pixel perfect images, we always found ourselves leaving these events asking for more… How did our fellow designers achieve these perfect results? What were some of their struggles and how did they overcome them? What learnings could we get inspired by and can directly apply to our work tomorrow? And although there is undoubtedly a huge benefit hearing from leaders in our field, how do everyday designers like us solve their challenges?
This is why we decided to create our very own conference made by designers for designers, with the goal to answer all of these questions. In each DTNS edition we want to hear from professionals who dare to share with us what goes on behind the scenes. Discuss with us stories that are real rather than commercial pitches and share with us examples and best practices that we can take back to our work the next day!
It all started in 2018
The very first edition of DTNS was in 2018 in Rotterdam, the theme was ‘action <-> reaction’ which was inspired by the exposition running at the at ‘De Kunsthal’ at that time. We could not have hoped for a more creative environment than the art museum of Rotterdam to introduce DTNS to our community. We got together for the first time in a quite intimate setting with all our colleagues present, ready to discuss hands on design practises.
The year after, in 2019, DTNS traveled to Brussels with the theme of ‘Renaissance’. Much like the cultural movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life, we felt that we were now experiencing a digital renaissance in design and in banking, two fields that did not usually go hand in hand. In just one year, we saw our conference audience grow as we welcomed over 200 attendees from the world of design, using only word of mouth to promote our conference. We knew then that we would definitely not stop now! And then we did… well, the whole world did.
We were only able to come back in 2021, after a year of a global pause. We broadcasted the third edition of DTNS live to the world from a studio in the Netherlands. Our theme was ‘The shape of tomorrow’ were we discussed how we, as designers, have the power to define and shape the future even in times of uncertainty. Over a thousand people subscribed and tuned in. It was the moment to realise that conferences like DTNS are needed in the design community and this only encouraged us to keep going!
Breaking Barriers
After our successful online edition, the first to be organised by an international team rather than a local one, we wanted to maintain and enhance the diversity of the DTNS team. Furthermore, we wanted to organise a hybrid event, broadcasting once more online and with attendees on-site. This way, DTNS would remain accessible to designers all over the world but we would also have the opportunity to (re)connect with our community in real life. Does that sound ambitious? Well, it was… Did we struggle in the process of making it happen? You bet!
The DTNS team now included ING designers from the Philippines, Romania, Belgium, Germany and of course the Netherlands. There were a lot of questions we asked ourselves while figuring out how plan the new edition of the conference but also how to collaborate and communicate efficiently within our team. The same questions remained relevant in a greater context and finally got to influence our conference theme.
What does it take to create truly meaningful connections in today’s fast paced world? We all have different beliefs, cultures, perceptions, identities and abilities… How can we break all these invisible (and sometimes not so invisible) barriers and build profound connections and experiences with each other and with our products? Hence the theme of the 4th DTNS edition: Breaking barriers.
With this theme in mind, we already started the call for speakers. We reached out to people from different countries, backgrounds, and fields of expertise to hear about the way they broke barriers using design. DTNS at this point is no longer a brand new event. Our stage has already welcomed digital professionals from KLM, Spotify, Ubisoft, Centica, Proximus, the User Research Academy, and of course ING so, we had to maintain a level of quality in the featured talks while staying true to our purpose of bringing real stories to our audience.
Then there is the planning of all other aspects of the conference. There is so much work involved in organising such an event let alone a hybrid one! Especially for our team since we are not professional event planners but designers working in different timezones. So, how did we do this? And how do we do this year and year again?
The answer is simple, we apply our very own design process to design the DTNS conference.
How we make it happen
We know ‘why (we do this conference)’ and once we had our theme for this year’s edition, we had the ‘what (we want to discuss)’. Now, we had to define the how (will we present it to our audience).
Wether you are a designer or not, you may know that defining the ‘how’ in any type of project is not at all a linear process. Many ideas came to the table and we had to figure out how to design the best hybrid event that was also feasible. For example, ING is active in many countries, which means that our event could take place in any of them or, in multiple countries at the same time even. We had to decide where to host the on-site conference.
Pitches from speakers started filling in our inbox and we had to decide who would make it to the final lineup and how could their stories connect. Could we guarantee equal representation on our stage?
What is our backup if COVID strikes again and what can we do if one of our speakers could not make it on the day for whatever unpredictable reason? Even within our global and diverse team, would the direct feedback culture of the Netherlands match well with the less direct feedback culture of the Philippines?
I can say today that, after the 4th edition of DTNS is done, working through all the above was relatively easy. Every member of the team had a specific task to take care of and we were excited to complete it knowing that it would result to yet another inspiring DTNS edition.
Making it to the conference day
We decided that for the first hybrid edition of DTNS we would go back to our roots, that meant the Netherlands and specifically Amsterdam. We were lucky to be hosted by the Rijksmuseum, a partner of ING. This meant that we could combine our conference once again with a museum visit much like our very first edition. Rijksmuseum in itself has broken barriers by committing to become accessible for people with different abilities as explained very well by Cathelijne Denekamp, the accessibility manager of the museum. This made it an ideal location and accessible to all.
As the speaker’s lineup was coming together, we managed to really craft a strong breaking barriers storyline. It went on like this:
Constantine Gavrykov from adidas, was the one to open the Breaking Barriers edition of DTNS. He talked about the way we can practice resilience as an ability to help us bounce back in times when the unexpected uncertainties have become a sort of new normal.
Constantine and DTNS go way back. He has attended all our previous DTNS editions and watched our livestream with his entire team at adidas the year before. He has even been a guest to the design podcast of our colleagues Filip, Jorn and Inês called ‘Design away’. This year, we were honoured to welcome him on our stage staying true to our purpose to hear real stories from our own community.
The stage lights were dimmed as Liza Enebeis and Christopher Noort from STUDIO DUMBAR/DEPT® took the stage. The focus of their presentation was their work with motion design and how it breaks barriers from the traditional ‘static’ branding.
This was the first time that we included pure visual designers in our DTNS line up. Liza and Christopher did not only show beautiful visuals, they explained the thought, the process and the tooling behind their wonderfully captivating art. Their work impressed the visual designers in the audience and not only.
Paul Versteeg from fresk.digital followed and talked to us about the importance of understanding and acknowledging the limitations and boundaries we often face in our design process. He explained how when we face a design challenge we must follow the beat of our own drum as a way to think and design out of the box. How zooming out and gaining perspective is often more fruitful than just copying dribble designs.
Then came Diego Snayers ‘one of our own’ from the former ING Neo. A truly human centered designer and master of systems thinking. He talked about how we could use systems thinking to understand not only our projects but the people we work with who have different roles within the organisation. How can we speak the same language with people who have different (business) goals, different objectives and perspectives than us to achieve wonderful results for everyone.
Dan Ramsden from BBC closed the fourth edition of DTNS by discussing how we can make the uncomfortable easier to navigate. He talked about stepping out of our comfort zone and daring to clarify basic assumptions within your team. Daring to speak up for things that are uncomfortable can lead to in fact better collaborations in the long run so, don’t spent time talking about the weather and dare to address that “The emperor is not wearing any clothes!”
Breaking Barriers while not breaking down
Our line up and their stories resulted in a thought-provoking day full of creative talks on stage and lively conversations off stage. We loved hearing from the attendees in the venue, but also from designers watching us online, about how the speaker’s presentations inspired them. However, a conference is not just the speakers in it, although they are a central point of the event. There are other aspects in the organisation of such a conference that are crucial to its success or that can eventually lead to a disaster.
There were a lot of ‘unknown unknowns’, as our speaker Constantine would put it, that we had to deal with. After one of the sponsors backed out a couple of months before the event, we found ourselves a few steps back. We had to fill in the gap and fast! See, every year we want to keep the conference as true to its purpose and as commercial free as possible. It is a conference we want to keep free for all, while maintaining a high level of quality in the talks. The decision to proceed without this major sponsor was hard to make, but we knew we were doing the right thing.
Then a few weeks before the event we learned that our speaker Dan could not in fact join us live on stage. We had to Keep calm and carry on. Luckily, he prepared the best video in the universe for us so we could still enjoy his wonderful talk in the conference. Unfortunately, we could not really interact with him in real life, although we knew he was watching us from his… comfort zone. One of the perks of a hybrid event that breaks barriers, I guess!
Tough, but fun
A month has passed by since the conference as I write this, and right now, I am still on a ‘DTNS high’. Sure, organising an event of any type is stressful and full of unexpected things that can break the process. If you manage to design an event with no hiccups, no last-minute changes and no internal conflicts, you can call yourself lucky and I will call you a wonderful liar!
My personal takeaway from this year’s DTNS is that Breaking Barriers is hard but definitely worth it! Like discussed by many of our guest speakers, the different perspectives, assumptions and views we have of the world can hinder any type of collaboration. We too had our struggles. In the end, what matters is your drive. Remembering why you do something. Our team’s common goal was to bring another DTNS edition to our design community, reconnect and talk about design. This was the glue that kept us all motivated, connected and energised.
There is an obvious need to talk about efficient collaboration, resilience, diversity and inclusiveness in our design community. We saw this not only in the submissions we received this year but also in the feedback of our audience. Our products and services need to represent the world we live in and make room for everyone in it. This can only start to happen when the teams behind these products are also inclusive, diverse and resilient.
Planning an event like DTNS is a fun rollercoaster ride with ups and downs. The strange thing is once you are off the ride you will have the urge to do it all over again! So, hopefully, I will see you all again at our next edition. Until then, auf Wiedersehen ;) !!!
