April 22, 2021 - No Comments!

Applications Open for Railyard Lab in Fall 2021

Calling out for design thinkers, innovators, and problem-solvers; Dossier is excited to announce that applications are open for our Fall cohort of Railyard Lab!

Railyard provides students from both design and business backgrounds the opportunity to lead projects in partnership with social ventures.

Running as your own design studio, you'll be put into a team of 4-6 and will work on branding, design, strategy, and digital projects for various social enterprises. Throughout the internship, you will be receiving training from Dossier Creative that ranges from brand strategy to client services as well as continuous 1-on-1 mentorship and access to project advisors. You will also be learning from each other as each intern will be taking on a breadth of different roles throughout the projects in the Fall.

This isn’t your typical internship. Dossier started Railyard Lab with the objective of creating a meaningful opportunity for design students and business students to build together and run their own projects and manage their clients. We make sure you gain real-world, hands-on experience by giving you plenty of responsibilities in everything from designing, budgeting, and working on projects.

Who are you:
Current students or recent graduates from a min 4-year undergraduate program preferably but not limited to either design or business-related studies.

Who we’re looking for:
- Design students who are passionate and familiar with one or more design disciplines: visual design, UX strategy, experience design, product design, service design, or digital design.
- Entrepreneurially minded students with an affinity for business and innovative mindsets.
- Web developers who are excited to stretch their minds in creative spaces but can bring strong technical skills to the table.
- Highly collaborative and great team players who have demonstrated excellent leadership and communication skills.
- Strong strategic thinkers who are interested in design thinking and branding.

When:
- Fall 2021 (September - December)

What to include:
- Resume
- Portfolio (Case Studies of past projects)

How to apply:
Send your application to info@railyardlab.com before the end of May. We will be reviewing applications and conducting interviews on an ongoing basis, meaning the earlier you apply, the better! This is a paid internship. For more information on previous projects and work completed by Railyard, check out our 'Work' section of the website!

July 12, 2020 - No Comments!

Railyard Lab 2020 Applications Open!

Calling out for design thinkers, innovators, and problem-solvers; Dossier Creative is excited to announce another year for Railyard Lab is accepting applications!
Railyard provides students from both design and business background the opportunity to lead projects in partnership with social ventures.

Running as your own studio you will be put into a team of 4-5 and will lead design challenges for various social enterprises. Throughout the internship, you will be receiving training from Dossier Creative that ranges from brand strategy to client services as well as continuous 1-on-1 mentorship and access to project advisors. You will also be learning from each other as each intern will be taking on a breadth of different roles throughout the projects in the summer.

This isn’t your typical internship. Dossier started Railyard Lab with the objective of creating a meaningful opportunity for design students and business students to build together and run their own projects and manage their clients. We make sure you gain real-world experience by giving you plenty of responsibilities in everything from designing, budgeting, and working on projects.

Who are you:
Current students or recent graduates from a min 4-year undergraduate program preferably but not limited to either design or business-related studies.

Who we’re looking for:
- Design students who are passionate and familiar with one or more design disciplines: visual design, experience design, product design, service design, or digital design.
- Entrepreneurially minded students with an affinity for business and innovative mindsets.
- Web developers who are excited to stretch their minds in creative spaces but can bring strong technical skills to the table.
- Highly collaborative and great team players who have demonstrated excellent leadership and communication skills.
- Strong strategic thinkers who are interested in design thinking and branding.

What to include:
- Resume
- Portfolio (Case Studies of past projects)

How to apply:
Send your application to info@railyardlab.com. We will be reviewing applications and conducting interviews on an on-going basis, meaning the earlier you apply, the better! This is a paid internship. For more information on previous projects and work completed by Railyard, please visit www.railyardlab.com

June 14, 2019 - No Comments!

Design Thinking With David Dunne

In a small team of five, you quickly get to know everyone and their working styles here at Railyard, and I’ve come clean really early on. I don’t like ambiguity. So you can only imagine my reaction when we were told that we would have a conversation on different levels of abstraction with David Dunne. Obviously not great, I mean what the hell is going on? I’m a designer, not a philosopher.  

As we moved through his workshop, I actually found myself inspired and engaged as he effectively walked us through the Design Thinking process. According to David, there are three core phases in this journey:

Problem Framing 
The first phase focuses on exploring different frames and identifying the problem we want to solve. He described “good” problem framing as having the “right” abstraction and ambition level with consideration of biases and point of views. Meaning that the question should be narrow enough so we know where to start brainstorming, but also broad enough so we have room to explore ideas.

Question the problem, which one are you going to solve?

Understanding User Experience
The second phase is all about the users. It is important for us designers to empathize with the people we are designing for. Specifically, we need to try to understand the context surrounding the use of existing product and why they work or don’t work.

Prototyping (Making and Testing Solutions)
The third phase involves prototyping. By creating a tangible form for the problem, we gain further understanding of the user’s experience and underlying problems/challenges at hand. In a way, it is a chance for us to put our theories to work and gather insights from poking holes into a potential solution to generate a more suitable solution.

With those ideas in mind, we were then put to work right away to generate “how might we” questions of different abstraction levels for one of our projects. At this point, I was freaking out a little as I’ve always had trouble thinking in a more abstract level and wasn’t comfortable with ambiguity and such. Right before my brain started to shutdown due to frustration, David introduced the concept of abstraction ladder (more generally known as the Why-How ladder) which made so much sense and saved me from a mental-meltdown crisis.

We started the process by placing the HMW question at the middle of a theoretical ladder. Above us sits the question of “Why?” and below us sits the question of “How?”. Above (why) is the more abstract and generalized idea of the problem and below us (how) sits the more concrete idea of what needs to be done. This exercise really helps practical thinkers like me to delve into higher level thinking as well as to think outside the box.

Through the workshop, I realized that design thinking is about problem finding more than problem solving, and problem framing is such a crucial part of the discovery process. Finding the right problem to solve not only makes the design process more efficient but also ensures that the solutions we come up with are relevant.

I’ve always imagined the Design Thinking process as a linear process much like the scientific method used in research. Through this workshop I learned however that it is not the case. Design thinking is not a linear exercise in which one step neatly follows another, nor is it circular. It is more of a back-and-forth process where one might go from analysis to prototype and back to analysis, then on to gathering insights and data again.. and so on. To us designers, where we start doesn’t really matter. Just like the story about Hoogendoorn’s back and forth development of the stormproof umbrella, design is about exploration.  

Design thinking is a process: a collection of things that you do to innovate.

 

June 7, 2019 - No Comments!

Mindfulness as a Way of Life

Kicking off the beginning of Railyard 2019, David Choy had just come fresh from a ten-day silent retreat to introduce this year’s theme, Mindful Design. To be honest, this was my first day on the job, third day back in the country, I was jet-lagged, and I had no idea what to expect. For the first 10 minutes of the presentation, I was grappling at why I didn’t go to sleep earlier all the while trying to wrap my head around the fact that David could meditate for 10 hours a day, every day, for ten days straight. As someone who can be a bit more reserved, even I, seriously, can’t remember the last time I was silent for more than half an hour.

In his ultra-soothing voice, David explained to us that User Experience (UX) Design is something that is constantly evolving because humans are constantly changing. What once started from designing for convenience, grew quickly into a values-based economy. Now there is an increasing interest and emphasis on human-centered design focused around the human perspective. As this movement is shifting and urgently becoming more important, how should we as designers use our seat at the table? How do we practice mindfulness, not only in our design process but rewire it into the way we see the world? Defined, mindfulness is directing attention to the present moment, noticing what you notice without judgment. Lowering cognitive bias from the world around us and freeing our own biases, taking in each piece of information at face value, untampered— just as it is, and just as it comes.

Now, of course, that’s easier said than done. When it comes down to it, it is practicing and adopting mindfulness that really matters. An important takeaway for myself is, “how you say something is just as important as what you say.” It is by taking “that moment to pause and choose your responses mindfully,” that  we begin to “make space for another human.” Before attempting to understand another perspective one should evaluate and know the colour of their own lens, how your own experiences can cloud your judgment, and how to remove and address your own bias.

All-in-all, that sounds great, but what does that even mean? What is m i n d f u l  d e s i g n ? How do I know that it’s not just another buzzword for companies to use with empty promises like diversity— I’m not down to be another token Asian in a company orientation deck, and diversity— I’m looking at you Uber. Forgive me if I’m coming off a bit jaded, but you hear a lot of job postings and companies selling design as something that changes the world. Do you actually have a plan in motion? Is it actionable? How are you going to change the world? That’s a really big job. In theory, mindful design is beautiful. In practice, it can be really hard.

So how have I done it? As a designer who has worked abroad, I have learned, and continue to learn, what it means to define and redefine myself as an Asian female designer. Working in a company and living in a city where I am a visible minority has taught me what it feels like to be overlooked and excluded. It is often the small comments people say that really gets to me.

Having had the privilege to travel has been an extremely humbling experience; it has challenged me to evaluate my own biases and how my perspective can be damaging. That’s how I practice mindfulness. Start small. Start by being a bit more thoughtful, a bit more empathetic. Take that extra moment to reflect. Put yourself in another’s shoes. Be open to learning and experiencing new things. Embrace it. What can seem small and insignificant can truly mean the world to someone else.

At the end of the day, it’s about using what little power you have in your own hands and acting on it more thoughtfully. In your personal life, strive for a new standard– it isn’t about changing the world, but about small steps we all can collectively take. Maybe it’s my two years of university with the romantic notion of being an English major, or maybe it’s because I’m currently listening to Sampha on repeat (btw, if you don’t know who that is, you should definitely check him out), but I do truly, even a bit naively, believe that design, in one small way or another, can make a difference if we just took a moment and all tried a little harder. I think that it all kinda goes without saying, all good design is mindful design.

Start now.

As David would say, why wait for permission to give the world beauty?

(Also, David, keep up the good work, that was super neat how you can lift yourself up with those handlebars.)

December 18, 2018 - No Comments!

Railyard Lab 2019 Applications Open!

Calling out for design thinkers, innovators and problem solvers; Dossier Creative is excited to announce another year for Railyard Lab is now accepting applications!
Railyard provides students from both design and business background the opportunity to lead projects in partnership with social ventures.

About Railyard Lab
Running as your own studio from May to August you will be put into a team of 4-5 and will lead design challenges for various social enterprises. Throughout the internship you will be receiving training from Dossier Creative that ranges from brand strategy to client services as well as continuous 1-on-1 mentorship and access to project advisors. You will also be learning from each other as each intern will be taking on a breadth of different roles throughout the projects in the summer.

This isn’t your typical internship. Dossier started Railyard Lab with the objective of creating a meaningful opportunity for design students and business students to build together and run their own projects and manage their clients. We make sure you gain real world experience by giving you plenty of responsibilities in everything from designing, budgeting and working on projects.

Who are you:
Current students or recent graduates from a min 4 year undergraduate program preferably but not limited to either design or business related studies.

Who we’re looking for:
Design students who are passionate and familiar with one or more design disciplines: visual design, experience design, product design, service design or digital design.
Entrepreneurial minded students with an affinity for business and innovative mindsets.
Highly collaborative and great team players who has demonstrated excellent leadership and communication skills.
Strong strategic thinkers who are interested in design thinking and branding.

What to include:
- Resume
- Cover letter:
What are you passionate about?
What can you bring to the team?
Why are you interested in interning at Railyard Lab?

- Portfolio (if applicable)

How to apply:
Send your application to Railyard’s Manager, Cherihan Hassun at cherihan@dossiercreative.com by February 28, 2019. We will be reviewing applications and conducting interviews on an on-going basis, meaning the earlier you apply, the better! This is a paid internship running from the beginning of May to the end of August 2019. For more information on previous projects and work completed by Railyard, please visit www.railyardlab.com

September 5, 2017 - No Comments!

The Digital Legacy

Originally I wrote this post about a week ago but it’s now live! What is it you ask? It’s a digital legacy project called “Archive” created by the 2017 Railyard cohort.

Let me explain: Each year Railyard challenges the current cohort to come up with something that can leave a legacy behind for the next cohort. We receive some money and come up with a proposal and budget on what we’re doing, then pitch it to the studio. Sounds easy, right?

How Might We...

Is a method to rephrase insights to questions that would allow us to turn challenges into opportunities. So we utilized the Google Venture sprint process to help us figure out what on earth we’re going to propose that could help us leave a legacy. Our first step was to come up with a long-term goal, that is, ultimately what are we trying to achieve? At first this was to “leave a legacy”, which over time transitioned to “leave something of value”? But how might we determine what is valuable? How might we also make it valuable to those outside of Railyard? And why are we only looking at future cohorts? How might we make this work for us now? What about previous cohorts?

Legacy Project 2017 How Might We's

Through these questions we brainstormed quite a few ideas that matched with those “how might we’s”. Ultimately, we ended up with something along the lines of:

A platform that would facilitate the exchange of knowledge, ideas, tools and resources.

Broad right? That’s what we thought too. We looked at this deeper, looked around our space, and tried to come up with more ideas on what we could do to further facilitate the transfer of knowledge. Sure we had access to previous cohort’s files on the server, there was some contact with them in the first week through a casual get-together for drinks, but there was never a consistent transfer or sharing of knowledge from one cohort to another, or even from Railyard to others outside of Railyard.

We know we’re not super smart people, but there’s other super smart people out there: Previous Cohorts (Railyard Alumni), professors, researchers, speakers, etc. Then we realized, wait, they already do share their knowledge with others, it’s called books (and Medium articles)!

If you’ve never been to our studio space, Railyard has this really ugly metal looking cart that we call a bookshelf. It’s kind of sad, there’s books on it, and random stuff from previous cohorts. Why is this sad excuse of a bookshelf even here? So we challenged ourselves: Can we create a presence that achieves our long term goal (of sharing knowledge) and answers our how might we questions (of providing value to all)?

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Thus was born, the bookshelf. I’m not going to go into too much detail here with the bookshelf because it’s a shelf, we built it, we stained it, we put it on the wall. We curate books for it with the help of Railyard creator, Ronna Chisolm. We didn’t buy the shelf from IKEA but that’s not the point.

Our completed new shelf.

Our new shelf! Complete with a "library card" that gives you a description on what makes that book so special and who recommended it to our shelf.

 

Railyard Studio Space 2017. Joseph is hard at work!

Railyard Studio Space 2017. Joseph is hard at work on our Digital Project (read below)!

A Digital Perspective

Unsurprisingly, the bookshelf didn’t satisfy all of our “How Might We” questions. Therefore we began looking at this from a digital perspective, because we’re all so invested in the world wide web (it feels weird to say that), so we looked at how we could possibly bring this idea to the online world allowing us to leverage the Railyard Alumni network and others who would gain value from this platform but not be able to physically come to our studio space to borrow the books we curated for our shelf above. That’s how we came up with the digital version of “Archive”.

ry_legacy_macbook

The Digital Archive is a board for sharing links from the internet, kind of like Pinterest but specifically for Railyard cohorts (past, present and future). The topics of interest include things like Business & Design (Dossier and Railyard’s bread and butter), Technology, Inspirations, Resources and anything else that doesn’t quite seem to fit but is still worth sharing.

“The Digital Archive is a board for sharing links from the internet, kind of like Pinterest but specifically for Railyard cohorts.”

The idea is that each cohort (and its members) can contribute to this vast directory of awesome useful links that help us become better designers. Tapping into Railyard Alumni to help us discover links that we may not come across in our everyday tasks. Because that’s the amazing thing about Railyard that I forgot to mention in the beginning, each cohort is very diverse. And that’s the beauty of it, diversity adds a whole new layer to the sharing of knowledge.

We try to make it easy.

We built the digital platform to be as easy to use and as frictionless as possible, so when you submit a link, we scrape the page for you, grabbing what we think would be useful such as a selection of images to choose from and the page title. All you do is fill in the reason on why you want to share this link. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to share links without the person submitting the link having to worry about coming up with a title and figuring out how to take a screenshot and upload an image. We do all that for you; of course you can still customize these to whatever you see fit but we’ve tried to make it painless.

See how we filled in some information for you? There's also a "auto fill" button if you really can't think of anything to write for the description.

See how we filled in some information for you? There's also a "auto fill" button if you really can't think of anything to write for the description.

Bug-squatter.

Word of warning. We built this platform from the ground in just a few weeks (on and off), this includes design and development. So think of this as version 0.01. If you notice any weird bugs that hasn't already been reported, please let us know. We'd also love your feedback on what works for you and what you'd like to see in the future.

There’s a wish list of features we’re hoping to add in the future and for now submitting links is only available to Railyard Cohorts (past, present and future) but everyone is welcome to look at the Archive and we hope it will help you become a better designer (or at least be inspired with what you see).

So if you haven't already, check out the Railyard Archive.

Thanks,

Railyard 2017 Cohort (RY17)

August 3, 2017 - No Comments!

The Lily Projects: Reflection and Behind the Scenes

Fabulous news: we finished The Lily Projects branding for our client Kisa Macdonald as of late June! That makes one of two client projects complete for summer 2017. Below you will find some of our major takeaways and process.

The Problem

banner2Kisa is a driven Vancouver artist and legal practitioner with experience in curation, legal research, and writing. The Lily Projects was named for 3 Lilies she met during her work with sexual assault survivors. Through them, she discovered how flawed the systems are, and how hard it is for survivors to seek help.

So, when Kisa came to us, The Lily Projects was just beginning. Her passion had already earned her collaborators, but they did not yet have traction. Our job was to help her secure funding by creating a brand identity, business model, and comm. strategy.

Challenges and Rewards

Image of black and white marker sketched of many logo ideas and sketches

One of the most challenging sides of this project was wrapping our heads around the wicked hard problems surrounding the Legal System - something beyond the capability of a single non-profit society. We conducted interviews with survivors and gathered Canadian statistics and research. We discovered most Vancouver sexual assault support organisations serve only females, and some have strained relationships with trans-women. We also found Canadian and BC laws are actually incredibly progressive, but practise has not caught up. These, among others, helped us define a distinct gap for The Lily Projects to fill.

Ronna also organised an external advisory meeting with Railyard alumni, experts, and strategists including UVIC Professor and Director David Dunne, IBM UX designer and former Yardie Stevie Nguyen, and social service and non-profit specialist Julia Kochuck, and SAP's David Choy (needless to say, we were nervous!). This meeting was a turning point for us, and made us realise we had spread too thin. We had confused our audience, and in that moment, we felt the wind suck out of our sails. We had to stop and rethink our strategy.

Lesson learned: you can only do so much over the summer. Don't plan too far ahead with a brand or your work may suffer for it. Think in the now, what does your brand need now? But still consider how can you also make it easy for it to expand and grow in the future.

Our Logo

Kisa liked to say, "it's like you took my jumbled plate of spaghetti and lined up all the noodles in neat rows". Kisa has a lot of ideas and strong beliefs, which is fantastic, but trying to fit that all into the initial branding is tough. We pulled what we agreed to be the most vital and developed a logo mark with an upward, positive movement; inspired by bold justice and graceful lilies. We did our best to avoid being overly feminine, as the brand would serve all genders, races, and beliefs. You can see some of the mark's development below. Also, boy oh boy, do Brand Guidelines take longer than we anticipated!

May 15, 2017 - No Comments!

Introducing Railyard 2017!

Following our predecessors, the 2017 cohort is doing a fashionably late introduction two weeks after starting Railyard Lab! We are Annette Cheung, Breanne Lewis, Bruce Beh, and Joseph Coombes. All of us are Simon Fraser University students this time around, although our disciplines are varied between business, communications, and design.

It's been a busy couple of weeks and we already have three projects ongoing: two internal projects and one client project. Expect updates about some of those as we get closer to completion - there is a surprising amount of industrial design since none of us are industrial designers so Pat Christie over at Daly Co has been gracious enough to help us out.

18161696_510038339386851_5781203263781076992_nCheck out Instagram to see visual updates run by our lovely Annette who is a freelance photographer so expect some quality shots, y'all!

 

We also have Twitter if that's your jam!

 

September 2, 2016 - No Comments!

Our Legacy

Our first week at Railyard started off in an instant as we got working on our legacy project right away. Utilizing a modified and expedited Google sprint methodology, we developed an idea in one jam-packed day!

From journey mapping to sketching and from developing   to implementing, we created this legacy project to physically embody our experience at Railyard and allow future cohorts to do the same. Inside each rail, each cohort is tasked to put something that captures their experience at Dossier. In our rail, we put a number of slats of wood that contain advice and thoughts from this year that can be read by future cohorts! We hope that our insight and memories of this year is good reading for 2017 and beyond! Soon it will be their job to capture their experience in this makeshift time capsule in a fun and creative way!

 

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Enjoy!

2016  Yardies

September 1, 2016 - No Comments!

Four Months Ago

Four months ago, I began my Railyard internship not knowing what to expect, now I wish I could do it all again. Four months ago, I cautiously walked down Princess Ave into a big white building, now it’s my second home. Four months ago, I thought UX was designing apps, now it is being understanding and empathy towards real people. Four months ago, I met three of my coworkers, now they’re the talented, crazy individuals I call friends. It’s from these three individuals that where four months ago I thought I knew a lot, but now have even more of an appetite to learn. Let me explain.

Read more