McClatchy Innovation: Design-thinking programs

Goal: Build a user-centered culture from the production floor to the boardroom.

The McClatchy Innovation team facilitated design-thinking programs across McClatchy’s corporate departments and 30 newspaper markets. Our programs ranged from a two-day design-thinking bootcamp to a five-month product accelerator program. I worked on a lot of exciting projects, from developing award-winning human-centered AR/VR experiences to helping launch a racial-equity journalism event series. Ultimately, however, my goal was to build user-centered systems and processes. I launched two new programs, developed and delivered workshops on everything from diversity & inclusion to business model development, and worked with McClatchy leaders to reshape internal processes. Three years later, I’ve seen user-centered principles impact almost everything we do as a company, from our editorial strategies to our digital sales approach.

Design-Thinking Programs:

Spark Series: a two-day design-thinking fundamentals workshop for rising McClatchy leaders, spearheaded by McClatchy’s CEO.

Ignite: a five-month intrapreneurship program in partnership with Matter, a media-focused accelerator and V.C. firm.

McClatchy Innovation Academy: a 10-week design sprint for cross-functional McClatchy teams together tackling existing projects and challenges through a user-centered framework.

Program Materials:

We used a combination of Stanford d.School, Google Five Day Sprint, IDEO and our own methodologies in our design-thinking programming. I partnered with our team’s design lead to create templates, guides and prompts to help cross-functional teams across McClatchy.