The Adventures of Co-op-ing at Fusion: A Short Story
The Exposition
I fell in love with stories when I was a little girl. On days I didn’t feel good, I begged my dad to tell me stories. Even if I knew how the story ended, I was still always mesmerized and would lose myself in the imaginative world. As I grew up, my love for stories remained.
There’s a game I like to play called “story for story.” It’s exactly as it sounds — I’ll tell you a story, for a story in exchange. Essentially, a story transaction. Here, I’ll go first. Let me tell you about my experience as a co-op on the Fusion team…
This story begins in January 2023. In a season with new chapters and new beginnings in the air, I was excited to start my co-op experience. As a Health Science and Business Major with an Interactive Design Minor, I was super excited to have found this co-op as a place where I felt I could touch upon each of the learning paths I was on.
Brand Refresh
The first project I was a part of was a brand refresh initiative. This was the biggest area where I felt a lot of what I had known before was shaken. This project emphasized the importance of learning the story behind the design before jumping into designing. In order to best visually represent the brand, it first involved diving deep into understanding the team. Through presenting a competitive analysis and interviews with leadership, I was able to gain insights into not only what Fusion meant to the members of the team but also what narrative they wanted associated with Fusion. A few weeks later, during our Culture Week activities, I learned about the culture of the team through what they deemed were principles of Fusion along with different rituals the team was fond of.
From then, it was time to jump into ideating and creating. Referring back to all the research we had done, we started mood-boarding and drafting out logo ideas. We refined the logos we thought were stronger and saw how they looked in different use and situation cases, whether it was a powerpoint or an artifact or a notebook. This process really challenged what I thought I knew about brand design and made me think about the storytelling behind visually capturing the essence of a team in a logo and word-mark. I quickly learned that powerful brand work is being able to tell the story of a team through its visual elements and voice. In our Ideation phase, I came to realize how different design elements and choices can really affect the narrative. Small little tweaks in orientation, positioning, and size of different elements create different narratives to the design when working all together. Although this process is still in the works, I’ve learned valuable insights about brand work through the many months that we put into this project and have come to realize that brand work is all about story telling.
The End-to-End Design Process
When I was put on my first engagement, I was both excited and confused. Actually, very confused. I had read about and been told about the Fusion process, but this was my first time experiencing it myself. I was curious to see how the Fusion team navigated client facing projects and the end-to-end design process.
We went through all the steps of the human centered design frameworks — some I was familiar with, some I wasn’t. Honestly, I was ready to jump right into the parts I was most comfortable and familiar with but consider myself lucky to have been more involved in the other aspects much more. In my past experience, I’ve become very comfortable with the process of designing screens and have learned what to keep in mind in terms of spacing and hierarchy. From user interviews, to creating artifacts for session, to helping run session, to usability testing, there was the whole other side of the design process that I hadn’t gotten to experience yet, until now.
Having had more of a focus on the user interviews, analyzing the session results, and usability testing in this end-to-end design process, I came to the realization of the emphasis on the human as part of the human-centered design process. It was made very clear to me how important it is to get to know the users before designing and taking into consideration feedback given by the users in order to create successful designs. In my past experience, we hadn’t focused too much on the user itself when creating designs — the projects I was on focused much more on the technical design aspect. Going through the full Fusion process, I was able to understand the value in involving the users early in the process through the end of the process. I learned that in order to have a successful design product, it is so important to design with the user in mind. The frameworks that we went through in session really helped us gain an understanding of what the clients were hoping to achieve out of the product.
While I had been exposed to learning what a Fusion session was, it wasn’t until I was experiencing it for myself that I truly understood the value. Having the opportunity to be hands on during the session allowed me to understand what magic it really is that Fusion does. I was inspired as I helped my coworkers walk clients through various frameworks specifically chosen to break down the client’s needs and get to the root of what it really was that we were designing for. Not only were we able to gain insights about what features they were hoping the platform would have, but we got down to the “why” behind the features. By ensuring we had a good understanding of what the root issues to solve for were, we were able to keep those values in mind and allowed them to guide our design decisions.
Ethnographic Research
Put yourself in your user’s shoes, or in their home. Throughout my time on the team, I had the opportunity to be part of smaller initiatives and help out whenever I could. One of the moments I found the most rewarding was the opportunity to help with home interviews. I had the opportunity to talk directly to patients about their experiences in order to gain insights about the system. Listening in to the conversations and getting to experience how my coworker guided the conversation with a friendly disposition and remaining unbiased, but continuously curious, opened my eyes to the importance of being a good listener in order to be an effective designer. I came to quickly learn the value in taking the extra time and effort to meet someone where they are in order to gain the most honest insights. With my brief interactions with this initiative, I learned the importance of never assuming what the user’s experience is like and instead taking the time to listen to their stories.
Reflections
What really stood out to me from this experience was that not only was the team focused on where I could provide value to the team, but they also cared about how they could bring value to my experience. The team was continuously checking in and making sure I felt valued as a team member and that I was getting the most out of the six months as possible. It was really evident to me how much Fusion cares for each of their team members and how willing they were to get to know my story.
In my CapChron (a team-wide presentation), I was asked to give wisdom back to the team, and I’ve come up with three points:
- Listen to people’s stories.
- Drink enough water.
- Build your portfolio and resume, but don’t forget to build your memory book!
I’m continuously working on #1, fail to neglect #2 more than I should, and am recently working on #3.
Although my co-op is nearing its close with the Fusion team, I know I’ve been able to see so much growth in my design skillset and been challenged and inspired to keep leaning into human centered design thinking. I had been asked many times within the last month of my co-op, “Has there been anything you’ve wanted to do but haven’t had the time to do?” In reflection of that, I’ve come to realize that, yes! There are SO many things I want to do and haven’t done yet, but none of which would be contained in just a months time, but more so for the rest of my career. I’ve been so continuously challenged and inspired by the work that Fusion team does, and I hope to continuously work on my skillsets to be a more empathetic listener to being a creative designer, in order to bring more stories to life.
Conclusion
Though I am now no longer five years old, curled up in her childhood bed, I still share my love for a good story. Whether it’s listening to my grandma at the dining table and barely understanding with my broken Mandarin, or coming back from summer break and catching up with friends on a futon that isn’t fully put together yet, I love hearing about people talk about their experiences and seeing how those experiences have shaped the way they now act and live their lives. In my time on this co-op I’ve come to really recognize the value of listening to other people’s stories in order to design with the user in mind. Knowing very well that this is just the start of my journey as a designer, I hope to be able to continue to be a good listener in order to be an effective storyteller.
Though I am a bit unsure of where the rest of my personal story will go in the future, I’m excited for all that is to be learned and experienced and am so grateful for my time here and the relationships and friendships I’ve formed.
Well, here’s my story of the past 6 months being on the Fusion team. Your turn!
A Fusion publication. We are employees of UHG and these views are our own and not those of the company nor its affiliates.
