Atlassian Design Week
Each year, Atlassian designers from around the globe gather together in Sydney for a week of learning, inspiration, and working together as a team. This year, we added a couple twists.
Twist one: Our design team expanded recently to include multiple disciplines — design, brand, information experience, front-end development, and research. In structuring this year’s design week, we emphasized these disciplines with specific talks and workshops, and tailored other talks to blend our disciplines towards a greater effect. We believe that the most important result— a compelling user experience — cannot be created by focusing on one element alone. It’s about bringing together many perspectives: the deep understanding of the problem we’re trying to solve, the people we’re trying to solve it for, the technology we are pushing to the limits, and every micro-interaction and detail along the way.
Twist two: We wanted to avoid ivory tower design; where designers went off by themselves to a fabulous location and created something in isolation from the full development team of product managers, engineers, and marketing. So we intentionally reached across the aisles and included guests from these other parts of the organization, to learn and work together.
Twist three: We wanted to make our customers part of the experience, so we brought them in for a day of reflection, discovery, and learning about how they collaborate. We structured panel-style discussions due to the sheer number of attendees, but gave all observers training and roles to take notes, gather insights, and share outcomes.
We were thrilled by the results of the entire week, and have tried to capture the feel and outcomes in the video below. Hope you enjoy.
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