This article covers the special year-end party held during the coronavirus situation.
🔗 This article is an exact copy of the original text first published on Brunch. View original text on Brunch
There is a private designer community that has been running for several years. It is also called the ‘nameless designer private organization’, and we communicate with various IT designers in the field through the messenger Slack. Before 2021 passes, we decided to have time to talk more closely by holding a year-end party.
Actually, this is not the first year-end party like this(https://medium.com/@hyunji.ma/%EB%94%94%EC%9E%90%EC%9D%B4%EB%84%88-%EC%97%B0%EB%A7%90-%ED%8C%8C%ED%8B%B0-%EB%94%94%EC%9E%90%EC%9D%B8%ED%95%98%EA%B8%B0-play-design-2020-1b662d0a3102). Every year around this time, private organizations would make plans for year-end parties (or similar-titled gatherings), reflect on the past year, and think about the next year. However, under the suggestion that we should proceed a little differently this time, we decided to plan a slightly special year-end party together. Personally, I am very happy to spend time planning year-end parties like this. I think it is because just sharing thoughts with designers working in various environments is helpful and gives me positive energy.
... I can't believe I can use work as an excuse and spend quality time with good people! I think this is the real reason why we can have fun designing and participating in year-end parties every year.
It wasn't my intention, but looking back on the preparation process, I think it was similar to the design process. In a way, I felt like I was ‘designing’ the year-end party. Typically, when designing, you go through the stages of brainstorming, research, execution, and feedback. As I was writing this, I checked the overall schedule and it seemed to proceed similarly. Let’s check out how the designer designed the year-end party.
For the first time, I tried to freely express and collect various opinions. I think we were able to steadily prepare for this year-end party thanks to the active input of many designers. A variety of ideas were exchanged, including time to get to know new people, reflections, work-related stories, portfolio disclosure, conferences, and job change-related topics.
After a certain amount of opinions were exchanged, it was necessary to specify what was needed for the year-end party. With the distribution of work by Hyeonji, the head of the private organization and the king of organization, we were able to effectively share various opinions and quickly prepare the necessary elements for the event (I was in charge of taking photos and writing).
As the event planning was being finalized, an unexpected ambush appeared. As the coronavirus got worse, the quarantine rules changed. Because of the coronavirus, we were unable to prepare for the year-end party as originally planned. However, since we really wanted to have a year-end party (...), we re-discussed and decided that modifications needed to be made to fit the new quarantine rules, and half of our own will, half of us decided to push ahead with the year-end party in a slightly new way.
Thanks to quick discussions, we were able to safely complete preparations for the event according to the circumstances. We recruit both non-face-to-face video participants and those who will attend in real locations. Personally, I think it was new and interesting because it was the first hybrid non-face-to-face event I participated in.
As the year-end party was scheduled to be held as a hybrid event, what the ‘What to do that day’ team paid close attention to to ensure that non-face-to-face members were not left out. Two conditions were needed for this:
In order to meet the above conditions, all field participants brought laptops, and we were able to create a year-end party in a simple(?) way that everyone could participate in.
The actual party was held at a cafe rented after careful research by the ‘Venue Rental’ team, with party food prepared by the ‘Actually Gather to Eat’ team. Remote participants also brought their own food and ate together. I was able to have both the fun of observing and talking and the fun of eating.
The ‘What to do that day’ team was in charge of the full-scale year-end party session, and among various ideas, they came up with a fun concept that seemed to be a good fit for this year-end party. Since there were some who were new to the designer's organization and some who had never met before, we organized an ice-breaking session where we could have fun getting to know each other. We saluted the national flag and prepared MBTI questionnaires for each other.
This is the MBTI ratio of year-end party participants based on a survey, and the session was organized so that we could guess which type each person would be. Various types of designers participated, but it was interesting that three of them were ENFJs, which are known to be rare. (It is said that only 1% of the total population in Korea has this type!)
Since the MBTI that appeared in the statistics alone was not enough to provide hints, we released individual keywords collected through a survey in advance. By using three keyword hints, I was able to find out more specifically what interests various designers had, and I was able to continue the conversation in an interesting way during future conversations. (Thank you Dajeong for taking the lead in planning and conducting the keyword quiz session!)
I will briefly introduce the tools used in the session. Pig Jam, this tool is an online whiteboard tool that allows everyone to communicate in real time without having to meet. It is good for multiple people to gather in one space and communicate, and it is an intuitive tool, so it has the advantage of being easy to learn and use right away. This tool is gaining popularity recently, with many companies using it for meetings. Coincidentally, they prepared a participation session with Pig Jam, which suited the nature of this hybrid year-end party, and allowed us to participate in the session right away by clicking on the link on the day.
Now we've gotten hints about each other, we can play in real time, and we've actually had time to guess what type someone is. Although I couldn't get most of the answers right... I was able to have a good time just thinking about what kind of person the description might be and who might be of what type.
The correct answer was revealed by guessing like this! By the end of the MBTI session, we were able to talk about each other much more enjoyably. All were fun keywords, but I think Tarot Master and Africa were particularly hot keywords.
After getting to know each other a little, we started asking questions about the year-end party. We each took time to write down and share what we did in 2021, what we want to do in 2022, etc. It was good to learn about various tasks, studies, and unachieved goals.
What was especially good were the work-related keywords. It was a useful time to look at the things that various designers had thought about and tried while working as designers, such as figma, design system, A/B testing, and various domains.
2021 was a year in which there were particularly many job changes among the participants, and it was a meaningful time where we were able to hear honestly about each person's career-related concerns, including those who actually changed jobs and those who are currently contemplating a job change. I was able to talk about what standards you have from various perspectives, and personally, I think this process served as an opportunity for me to reflect on my own goals and standards.
We conclude with a review! Through various sessions, we were able to empathize with what each other did and what we would do. It was a difficult session to plan and conduct due to the current situation, but I think we were able to share a lot of in-depth stories. I think it was better to be able to support each other’s plans for 2022.
Personally, it was great to be able to have a year-end party with people who have similar concerns in the same job and various fields. Corona made us more creative and we were able to design a special year-end party, and because of that, I think it will be more memorable. But regardless of that, I will end this article with the hope that the coronavirus will end quickly. I hope that other people's plans for 2022 turn out well.
Thank you for reading this long post!
