Designing a Virtual Venue
On the Flexport UX team, it’s become a tradition for us to host a kickoff every January: a full-team offsite dedicated to celebrating our accomplishments from the previous year, aligning on the coming year’s goals, and most importantly spending some quality time together. For 2021, we knew we’d have to tackle things a bit differently. It’s no secret that people are getting a little tired of virtual events, but are simultaneously craving real connections with each other. When designing our kickoff this year, we wanted to be mindful of both of these perspectives. How could we create an event that went beyond a video platform, filled the gap for an offsite venue IRL, and was totally unique to our team and company?
“And with that, The Port of Loading was born: a virtual container yard meets dream offsite venue.”
Getting started
First, we knew we needed to build something that easily supported real-time, asynchronous, and digital collaboration, so we landed on using Miro as our hosting platform. While there are tons of awesome event and workshop templates in Miro’s library, one in particular stood out to us: The Amsterdam House by Essence. This design completely transforms a digital whiteboard into a 3-dimensional space, making it easy and entertaining to explore (even from home 😉).
Laying a foundation
Using the Amsterdam House template as a jumping off point, I brainstormed a list of potential “rooms” that we could build, keeping fun and function top of mind as I asked myself things like:
- What would people expect to see at a real offsite venue?
- What wouldn’t people expect to see at a virtual event, but would be entertaining and memorable?
- What events / activities are we planning to host, and what are logical room pairings for each of them?
- How can I optimize the digital aspect of this space to our advantage?
- How can I entice people to come back to this board and stay engaged outside of events?
It’s not every day you get to build your own venue from the ground up, and when you literally have the power to create anything you want, it’s crucial to define a baseline for what’s a must-have vs. a nice-to-have.
Another key piece I thought about was how to design this board in a way that paid homage to our industry and product space. At its core, Flexport is a tech-enabled platform for global trade, essentially a modernized freight forwarder. Even though ports and shipping containers are pretty consistently on our radar, working remotely makes it hard to manifest visual cues like those which are so prominent in our offices.
So, with that in mind, it seemed like a no brainer to use this Miro board as an opportunity to resurface some of that visual context we’ve all been missing. And with that, The Port of Loading was born: a virtual container yard meets dream offsite venue.
“It’s not every day you get to build your own venue from the ground up, and when you literally have the power to create anything you want, it’s crucial to define a baseline for what’s a must-have vs. a nice-to-have.”
Establishing the blueprint
With the conceptual groundwork in place, next I started sketching out possible layouts for what this board could actually look like. How could I best design an interesting space with plenty of team bonding opportunities, but also incorporate, you know, work? When drawn out, did each container still make sense for the activity it was paired with? Would people actually want to visit this place if it really existed?
Building the experience
After I felt confident in the layout, I could then take my initial sketches and translate them into a finalized board. Illustrating entirely in Miro, I used various shape and line tools to create the bulk of the imagery. My overall process went like this:
- First, I built everything out in grayscale so I could focus on getting forms and contrast levels right. Since I was new to illustrating directly in Miro, it was vital to experiment and familiarize myself with patterns that I could replicate down the line. For example, once I built out a single container and was satisfied with its overall silhouette, I could then just duplicate it and adjust the contents for the rest of the rooms.
- When all that was done, I took a step back and made sure each container’s contents were visually engaging, but not overwhelming, and had enough variation between each other. I looped in my team for feedback to confirm we were all on the same page.
- Next, I added color and lighting. I based my palette off of real shipping container colors (which are way more vibrant and bold than you might think!), but reworked them a bit to keep all content legible and accessible. Color was also a great way to make each container room feel more distinct. Was it possible to give each container a different base color without feeling too Crayola?
- Finally, I created the background environment and dropped in any missing text or other content (help pages, videos, links, etc.), again looping in my team for feedback and getting a second pair of eyes on anything I might have missed.
- Last but not least, I went back and locked most of the imagery to make sure people wouldn’t accidentally click + drag + unravel an entire container as they explored. I did leave a few things unlocked though, like drinks at the bar and coffee in the lounge. After all, if this were a real offsite, no doubt people would want to carry those around with them. 🍻
Shipping it!
Having the chance to level up our current circumstances with a new spin on remote events enabled me to give back to the UX team in an unconventional way that everyone could appreciate. When creating product illustrations, you’re almost always designing something that is part of a living, breathing system; a bigger picture with parameters and consistency to keep in mind. With a project like this though, I could kind of throw all that out the window and build something totally different.
Not only that, but The Port of Loading isn’t exclusive to the UX team. We know we aren’t the only ones at Flexport on a quest to make remote events more engaging, so we’re working on templatizing this Miro board and sharing it company-wide for any and all teams to use.
Fingers crossed we can get back to in-person events soon, but until then, catch you at The Port of Loading!
