What is a Design-a-thon?

Design collaboration is at the heart of what we do at Ayogo and is baked in to our culture. We are excited to kick off our very first Design-a-thon. As not everyone on the team is a designer, this design-focused team building event gives all Ayogis a chance to flex their design muscles.
So what is a design-a-thon?
Similar to a Hack-a-thon, a design-a-thon is a day-long event where Ayogis will shake up their usual routine to do:

• Design thinking,
• Creative exercises, and
• Teamwork that tackles design problems in original ways.

In our Design-a-thon non-designers will collaborate with designers on design challenges. We’ll stretch ourselves by working on problems we may not normally solve. And of course, it wouldn’t be Ayogo if there wasn’t some fun and surprising game elements!
Efforts from the day will be presented to the whole Team and judged by a panel of industry experts for a chance at glory and bragging rights.
Ayogis all own a piece of the Ayogo corporate culture and this is true for the Design-a-thon. Our Director of Client Services & Projects (Mala Srivatsa) and Creative Director (Patrick Moody-Grigsby) have been leading the charge:
Mala Srivatsa
Director of Client Services & Projects

I’m really excited to organize this event for our team at Ayogo. I’ve run design-a-thons and hackathons in some of my past roles at other organizations, and each time the experience is unique.
With our team’s wide spectrum of expertise and a challenging brief, I think we’ve got all the right ingredients for a fun and unorthodox day at the office. I hope we’ll learn a lot about our creative process and uncover new problem solving techniques; and look forward to capping off the experience by celebrating our solutions (and failures!).”

Patrick Moody-Grigsby
Creative Director

On the surface, the Design-a-thon is a chance for us to have a bit of fun . We’ll build stronger relationships between team members that might not get a chance to work together every day. Deep down, it’s an opportunity to use lateral thinking and approach healthcare solutions from new angles.
Edward de Bono has a beautiful metaphor comparing traditional problem solving as pouring hot water into wax. Once the water hits the wax, a path is created so that the next time you pour water into the same place it will flow the same way. This gets at the idea of entrenched assumptions and linear thinking. But if you pour the hot water into an untouched area of the wax, new paths emerge and eventually join up with the original. These new pathways can reveal incredible insights that you never would have found if you had simply continued pouring water in the same place every time.
The Design-a-thon is essentially just us having fun pouring the hot water into different areas of the wax and seeing what emerges. It’s the type of problem solving that differentiates Ayogo from other companies.”

Stay tuned for live tweets April 7 #AyogoDesignathon. We’ll share our successes and struggles from the actual Design-a-thon and reflect afterward on how you too can encourage design collaboration in the workplace.