Do you know Design at SAS?
Introducing what we do to local design students
If you live in or around the RTP area or know someone in the data science industry, odds are you have heard of SAS. As a Raleigh native — and then design student — I was aware of SAS’s presence and within its gates were design opportunities. But I had no idea what design team(s) existed, let alone who were the people that made up those teams. Now that I am a Visual Designer at SAS, I’ve become a part of a team with amazing people, and we have created some pretty cool things together. So. How do I share my experience with other young designers who also aren’t aware of the opportunities at SAS?
Some background.
The R&D Design team (made up of UX, Visual Design, Accessibility, and Front-End Development teams) has partnered with the Graphic Design Department at NC State University’s College of Design for about seven years now. This partnership consists of a semester-long project where a team at SAS defines a research topic, the design students then explore that topic, create a snapshot of a possible solution and then present their findings back to the SAS team. I’ve participated in this project as both a student and a project mentor.
Experiencing SAS R&D Design in this scenario is a unique opportunity, but it is also a bit of an intense situation. As a student, you are designing for a big-name company with big-name visibility for a big final grade. As a project mentor, you are focused on orchestrating and facilitating the setup and flow of the project rather than making connections with the students about what is Design at SAS. Not an ideal “get to know you” environment. It’s like trying to introduce yourself in a crowded room.
So, how do you make a meaningful introduction?
You want your first impression to be a good one. You want to find a way to be authentic and approachable. Reflecting on my experiences as both NCSU student designer and SAS designer, I see a missed opportunity in that first impression. SAS doesn’t share much about the different design roles that make up the R&D Design team and what those roles do on a day-to-day basis.
Now what? How can you share this information and avoid just talking at them from a PowerPoint slide? How can you provide a quality and engaging snapshot of each role to a class full of students? How can you create an approachable environment, one without the stress of a big-name company and a big final grade?
A workshop! Completely separate from the sponsored project. Just designers talking to students about Design at SAS.
We gathered a small team lead by me and UX designer (and fellow NCSU Design School graduate), Megan Fowler. Reflecting on personal experiences as NC State design students, Megan and I came up with a two-part workshop.
- Part 1 was the presentation introducing a sample of different design roles at SAS: Marketing Graphic Design, Accessibility Design (Accessibility and Applied Assistance Team), UX Design, and Visual Design.
- Part 2 involved an activity that allowed the students to try on the different design role hats we introduced in Part 1. Focusing on design hats within R&D: Accessibility Design, UX Design, and Visual Design.
In Part 1, we created our slide deck with brief information about each design role and a sample of some work we do as that role. Typical stuff.
The only exception was in the Accessibility section, where we describe what it’s like to design for users with visibility constraints. Most design students aren’t usually given this type of user requirement for class projects.
We provided examples of what a website looks like to a person with and without cataracts to illustrate what designers may need to consider when creating digital UIs. We then included several pointers for designing accessible UI designs, like not relying solely on color to convey meaning. This section was an essential piece to the Part 2 activity.
In Part 2, students were tasked with creating a UI for a weather service that catered to 1 of 3 different personas. This was intentionally open-ended to allow students to choose if the best solution would be a mobile app or maybe something browser-based. We then introduced the personas, each with different wants and needs and visual accessibility constraints: common vision, color blindness, and age-related cataracts.
The activity time was broken into three stages, each focused on a different design role:
- Accessibility — create a set of requirements for the assigned persona. For some, this was a list of features the app or whatever had to have, and others, this was a list that included specific visual considerations based on the persona’s visual constraints.
- UX Design — develop a lo-fi task flow for the persona using the list of requirements
- Visual Design — create a mid-fi UI that incorporates the Accessibility requirements and the UX design into a visual system
In these stages, each student acted in that design role for their persona. But wait there’s more! To spice it up a bit and facilitate communication between the students, we had each of them swap their persona and whatever work they created within small groups. The swapping between each stage mimicked the interaction between different designers on one team.
After the workshop with the students, we opened the floor for conversation so that they could ask us any questions that were on their minds. The questions ranged from activity reflection to the transition from college to the “real world” as young designers to what our personal career goals were. This discussion time was probably the most crucial aspect of introducing Design at SAS. It allowed us to respond to honest questions as honest people, making the big-name not so big and the grade non-existent.
Now when they see us again the next year for the SAS sponsored project, hopefully, the students will feel more comfortable. They can focus on working with SAS, connecting to the project goal, and designing without (as much) stress knowing that there are authentic and approachable professionals on the other end.
Did it work?
Personally, I think our mini-workshop was successful; there were a few hiccups, but that’s to be expected. Our goal was to introduce Design at SAS, which I believe we did. We let the students try on different SAS “designer hats” and get a little experience about what each of those roles is like, at least for design in R&D. We answered genuine questions about our day-to-day roles and career paths. Most importantly, we shared our personal SAS Design stories with young designers. Those conversations will hopefully help them feel confident about writing out their own stories in upcoming years. Whether Design at SAS plays into their stories is up to each student. At least they are now aware of the opportunities and have a starting point to work from.
I hope to continue this workshop in the future and incorporate more design roles from SAS and maybe expand it to other departments in the College of Design as well. This was a good step towards building a stronger relationship with not only the College of the Design at NC State but also the growing design community in the area.
My opinions are my own.
