Blackbox

Blackbox is a global nonprofit committed to promoting equality of entrepreneurial opportunity through access to resources, mentorship, and immersive programs in the heart of Silicon Valley.

As a program intern, I helped the Blackbox team facilitate workshops, speaker events, and mini field trips around Silicon Valley for entrepreneurs from around the globe. During this internship, I actively looked for areas of the Blackbox experience that I could help improve during my time with the company.

Brief

Design a booklet that helps program participants visualize their schedule.

Problem Analysis

After conducting interviews with my coworkers and other business professionals, my key objectives were:

• Visually communicate session lengths and overall structure of the day’s schedule

• Provide space for participants to make annotations

• Convey Blackbox’s global brand values

Prototyping

I sketched low-fidelity paper prototypes to determine the visual layout and structure of the schedule.

Final Development

Below are a few examples from the final 10-page booklet. I chose a segmented timeline to highlight the approximate lengths of each session. To help identify sessions at a glance, I created categorization icons incorporating the Blackbox hexagon.

Reflection

This project taught me to pay close attention to detail. During my early iterations, my coworkers’ feedback was that the look and feel could align better with the Blackbox brand. Looking back, I proved to myself that I can take creative direction on a project and adapt to stakeholder feedback.

If I were to revisit this project, I would:

• Add and adjust visual elements to highlight the Blackbox brand

• Look for creative solutions to minimize repeated elements on each page

• Rework timeline design to better emphasize session length

Thanks for reading!