Authentic Design Founder on Running Remote Design Swarms

Design Swarms are now used worldwide to accelerate design collaboration in business, non-profit and education. A platform of shared visual process maps allows participants regardless of their skill or disciplinary backgrounds to collaboratively experiment and solve problems at high velocity. While swarm teams are often co-located, the method has the elasticity to be used by teams that are not in the same location or in time zone. In this session, Authentic Design Founder, Surya Vanka, shares tools, hacks, and tricks to running Remote Design Swarms. Surya Vanka is the Founder of Authentic Design - a firm that utilizes the “design swarms” theory to create unique product solutions for customers. Prior to starting Authentic Design, Surya worked for more than 15 years at Microsoft in many UX leadership roles - introducing the design thinking process to the company and pioneering the company’s first-ever Hackathon event. Prior to joining Microsoft, Surya was a design professor at the University of Illinois. Surya holds a degree from The Ohio State University and currently lives in Seattle.