A technical assessment is crucial for understanding your current tech setup and planning for the future. We're excited to share with you the very checklist we rely on.
With this checklist, you can:
Inventory your existing tech environment.
Identify potential risks.
Decide whether building or buying software is the right move for you.
Get your hands on the checklist we use to craft the best technology solutions for our clients and their users. Your path to better technology implementation starts with a simple download.
When Wil Arndt, the Creative Director at OXD, took the stage for the “Extreme Makeover: Internal Comms Edition” webinar, attendees didn’t know they were in for a crash course that would rival a year at design school. Hosted on March 27th as part of the webinar series by our sister company, ThoughtFarmer, this session was a goldmine for communications professionals seeking a fresh angle for their internal comms.
In just 45 minutes, Wil unpacked actionable insights and strategies to inject new life into stale internal communications. This webinar was tailor-made for those feeling their well-crafted messages were just blending into the background, unnoticed.
Key takeaways Included:
The fine line between art and design: Art lets ideas flow without restraint, whereas design is all about intentionality, prioritizing clear communication and usability. The wrong design choices can muddle your message.
Prioritizing substance over style: Engaging content must be valuable first, visually appealing second. Ensuring your messages are informative and meet your audience’s needs is crucial, with design elements serving to underscore your content’s clarity.
The dynamic duo of readability and legibility: Capturing and maintaining attention demands content that is both easy to read and visually accessible. Consistent use of style guides can help your messages stay accessible and engaging.
Understanding tables and spreadsheets: Each has its role; spreadsheets are for analyzing data, while tables organize data for clarity and direct focus to key insights.
Attendees also learned about the unexpected role kittens can play in teaching us about effective internal communications, adding a touch of whimsy to the serious business of design principles.
The webinar wasn’t just a lecture; it was an invitation to access a breadth of resources tailored to help anyone pick, plan, and perfect their new intranet.
Catch up on what you missed: The recording is available alongside the presentation deck and a host of valuable resources on the ThoughtFarmer website.
Deborah MacKenzie, Senior User Experience Designer at OXD, was invited to be a panelist at the Toronto Local Immigration Partnerships’s (InterLIP) capacity-building series on GBA+. The event covered themes around using GBA+ in program design, delivery, and evaluation in the settlement sector.
The panel was part of a three-hour virtual webinar held on March 22, 2024.
Service providers of all kinds rely upon quality, accurate usage data to make sound decisions and investments in their services. Now imagine if your service was offered across 1900+ different locations, many of which required remote access, and consisted of 20,000km of trails across tens of thousands of hectares of land?
Recreation Sites and Trails BC (formerly BC Forest Service recreation sites and trails) provides numerous recreation opportunities through sound management of public areas on Crown Land. In a recent project, RSTBC partnered with OXD in order to improve their collection and management of visitor use data. Accurate and timely visitor use data informs RSTBC’s operational efforts, recreation investments, and reconciliation efforts.
RSTBC faced challenges with its current visitor use data collection process. The existing approaches were inconsistent across regions and districts, leading to the risk of data loss, duplication, and challenges in accessing reliable data. Without a unified data collection and management framework, it was difficult to consolidate and analyze visitor use trends at district, regional, and provincial levels, creating barriers to informed decision-making for recreation and reconciliation initiatives.
RSTBC’s processes differed from those at BC Parks, making it difficult to track and analyze annual recreation visitor use data across all recreation lands managed by the Province of BC.
To address these challenges, OXD collaborated with RSTBC to create a robust action plan for establishing an efficient and consistent recreation visitor use statistics process. Our team conducted qualitative research to understand the current state of visitor data collection, identifying opportunities for improvement beyond technology.
We also reviewed BC Parks’ processes and tools to identify similarities and differences between the historically separate organizations. This research revealed the need for changes to the organization, processes, technology, training and change management to create a unified system and framework that could streamline the collection, consolidation, and analysis of visitor use data.
Key considerations included:
Exploring potential new technologies and integrating existing tools to expand their use for RSTBC.
Co-designing an initial draft for the purpose of visitor use data creation and collection, in alignment with the province’s Data Management Policy.
Surfacing organizational needs such as staffing, roles, and responsibilities to support long-term data collection and management success.
The insights from this collaboration will shape future investments and the development of a consistent and efficient visitor use statistics practice. By implementing a unified data collection framework, the RSTBC team can:
Facilitate data sharing across district, regional, and provincial levels to support effective recreation resource management.
Provide reliable data to inform decisions about operations, recreation investments priorities, and reconciliation efforts.
This work builds a foundation to address long-standing challenges in visitor use data collection. Our approach will ensure data is accessible, accurate, and actionable for Recreation Sites and Trails’ goals of improved recreation and reconciliation outcomes.
Over forty vibrant and enthusiastic participants came together for this year’s Vancouver Service Jam, where “Jammers” from around the world come together to prototype a service.
Our own Deborah MacKenzie, Senior User Experience and Service Designer, gave a Service Design 101 presentation.
We're thankful we had the opportunity to sponsor and support the local Service Design community. Check out some pictures from the event.
The Vancouver Service Jam is an event where “Jammers” from around the world spend 48 hours simultaneously prototyping services around a secret global theme.
We're happy to support the local Service Design community by sponsoring this learning event. Participants will learn and apply practical Service Design processes and techniques. The local event is March 1-3 and hosted by the Vancouver Service Design Community and Vancouver Design Check In. Our own Deborah MacKenzie, Senior User Experience and Service Designer, will be stopping by to say a few words.
A Jam brings together people across design industries to build a functioning prototype. The event is open to anyone interested in service design and customer experience, including designers, students, business analysts, researchers, academics, and customers. Visit the Global Jam website for more information around the themes.
The vibrant tapestry of Lunar New Year celebrations in Greater Vancouver reflects the rich cultural mosaic of our community. This festive occasion is observed by various Asian cultures, including but not limited to, China, Korea, and Vietnam. To help you make the most of this festive season, we've curated a list of events, fundraisers, and personal traditions from our staff.
“My family traditions are simple: visiting family, having dinner, and giving ‘New Year’s money’. I love eating sweets and my family makes our own nian gao (年糕), a sticky rice cake. We like using this recipe for a baked version, less traditional but just as tasty. All the food and traditions have meaning, including nian gao, meaning ‘high’ or ‘tall’. This represents a wish for things to get higher or better each year.”
“Celebrating Korean Seollal (설날) for me includes visiting my family and having a traditional meal together. The meal will include Tteokguk (떡국), a rice cake soup, and fresh mandoo (만두) (Korean dumplings) that we make together as a family the same day. When we have larger family gatherings, we play a Korean board game called Yutnori (윷놀이). Here’s a link to a free printable template for a modernized version of the game with English labels and instructions. And we also give out sebaetdon (세뱃돈), which is New Year’s money.”
You can go to the Visit Korea website to learn more about Seollal traditions.
Events around town
Spring Festival Parade in Chinatown
Organizers of the Chinatown Spring Festival Parade have confirmed the festivities and 50th annual parade will be held on Sunday, February 11. The free event is supported by the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver, Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, S.U.C.C.E.S.S., Chinese Freemasons Vancouver Branch, and Shon Yee Benevolent Association of Canada. Check their website as more information comes in.
LunarFest around Vancouver
This year's theme is “born to be free”, suggesting that the “most meaningful way to welcome the Year of the Dragon is for everyone to reimagine a free-flying dragon, soaring through a world where everyone can truly be themselves.” You can find Lunarfest Vancouver celebrations at the following locations:
šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square, 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7
Pendulum Gallery, 885 W Georgia St, Vancouver, BC V6C 2G2
Granville Island, Ocean Artworks Pavilion, 1531 Johnston St, Vancouver, BC V6H 3R9
Lunar New Year fundraiser for the Vietnam Education Society
The Vietnam Education Society is hosting a special Lunar New Year Fundraiser at Floata Seafood Restaurant. Your ticket includes delightful food, cultural performances, and activities while supporting students and their education opportunities in Vietnam. Get tickets through Eventbrite.
Golden Maple Lunar New Year Gala
On January 27th, after a four-year hiatus, the event promises to deliver a “visual and auditory feast”. Experience performances, festivities, games, and crafts. The event is at the Great Canadian Casino Vancouver in Coquitlam. Get tickets on Eventbrite.
Year of the Dragon Celebration
Visit the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden on Sunday, February 11th to enjoy vibrant performances including the Lion and Tai Chi Fan Dance, tea ceremonies, and traditional foods. There will also be storytelling and calligraphy, and guests can make wishes beneath the Wishing Tree. Visit the website to learn more and get tickets.
Lunar New Year 2024 events at VPL
The Vancouver Public Library is hosting events at many of the library locations, including a puppet show, family story times, and traditional celebrations. Visit their events page for more information.
UBC’s Lunar New Year 2024 Market
The University of British Columbia Botanical Garden is hosting a Lunar New Year market, February 3-4 from 10 am to 4 pm. Performances, sweet dumplings, and workshops are included in the ticket price. Visitors can also purchase fresh flowers and visit the many local vendors and food trucks onsite.
Learning and commemorating
For the coin collectors
Head to the Canada Post website to purchase their special pure silver coin. Designed by Canadian artist Aries Cheung, the 2024 Lunar Year of the Dragon is represented by a graceful dragon against the sky, along with the good fortune symbols of a plum blossom branch and a celebratory lantern.
If you’re looking to really gilt your coin collection, they also offer a pure gold option, but it comes with a much heftier price tag of course!
Teach youth about Korean New Year
Author and illustrator Aram Kim created “Tomorrow Is New Year's Day”, a book on how to celebrate Seollal, a Korean celebration of the Lunar New Year.
What to eat, and where…
Notch8 at the Fairmont Hotel is offering two Lunar New Year options for 2024: join them for afternoon tea or visit the moonlit lounge for specialty cocktails, dim sum, and other traditional delights.
The East Van Dumpling Fest Crawl, part of Dine out Vancouver, is a great way to try many different dumplings from Chinese dumplings, to Northern Vietnamese dumplings, and Nepalese momos to Mexican tamales! Get more info on the Dine Out website.
At OXD, we celebrate the many diverse cultures among our staff. We’re grateful to be able to participate in Lunar New Year festivities with our coworkers, friends, and community. And of course… eat all the food together. If we missed something, let us know at hello@oxd.com.
The University of British Columbia's (UBC) world-class Brand and Marketing team (BAM) handles promoting and managing UBC’s brand, and helping the university with design and digital communication services.
Over time, this mandate naturally led to the formation of two distinct delivery subteams within BAM—design and digital. However, leaders at BAM understood that, in the digital age, the lines between these disciplines are blurring and collapsing. The roles represented—graphic design, brand management and execution, user experience, and software engineering—needed to work closer together. And what better metaphor for this collaboration than a Design System, where design and development meet?
BAM partnered with OXD to help their teams work together on creating a Design System framework. This will better align their various web properties. OXD helped the team create an effective workflow for ideation, collaboration, and decision-making. Simultaneously, they tackled challenges in governance, enhancing staff experience, and improving process efficiency.
OXD took a "player-coach" approach, guiding BAM through the adoption of Agile principles. We also helped their designers level up their Figma skills.
During this coaching engagement, we uncovered a critical truth: A Design System transcends being merely a tool; it’s an essential component of effective brand management.
The initial engagement and coaching has helped our teams come together.
