Do it for the 'Gram

This event took place when instagrammable female empowerment quotes were having a *moment* and were extremely popular with our target audience —— young professional women. My strategy was to tap into the cultural zeitgeist without coming across as too girlboss-y or romanticizing hustle culture.

Without limits

Theme

Our company tagline was 'learn without limits' but that call to action wouldn't work for this audience, so I suggested we use #WithoutLimits as the campaign theme and hashtag, which would counter the idea of a glass ceiling and allow us to speak to the limitless potential of women.

Color palette & brand shapes

I wanted to avoid using pink as the primary campaign color due to its overuse in marketing to women, so I created a gradient with 3 of our brand colors (yellow, pink and blue) which was still feminine and eye-catching. To ground the designs I added a deep purple that provided great readability, and our organic brand shapes for texture.

Empowering quotes

This event experience would be driven by empowering statements and inspiring quotes from women in STEM and other fields. These quotes spoke to the impact that candidates could have at a mission-driven startup like Coursera.

Event experience

Our booth had to accomplish quite a bit in a 10' x 20' space. We needed a spot for chatting with candidates, space for storage and a laptop display, a table for swag, some kind of activity to draw people in and enough room for visitors to move around. I worked closely with our fabricator and the event team on a booth design that was inviting and clearly communicated the company's values and culture to potential candidates.

Interactive moments

Selfie spot

My research had shown neon signs were super popular with this audience, so I designed a selfie station in the booth that featured a neon sign which read "Learn. Grow. Code." for attendees to stop in and take photos with.

Write a postcard to your future self

We placed a custom branded mailbox at the corner of our booth to entice attendees to stop by and write a postcard to themselves following the prompt "#WithoutLimits I see myself...", which we would mail out after the show. This tapped into the accountability and manifestation trends at the time to voice your dreams into reality. There were 5 different postcards to choose from featuring inspiring words from successful women.

Enamel pins

For swag we wanted to avoid creating a lot of plastic waste from items that would get tossed right after the show, so I designed a set of high-quality enamel pins with uplifting messages about working in STEM.

Our pins were a big hit at the conference, drawing a lot of people over to our booth. They also were receiving lots of love on our social channels with learners around the world wanting to get their hands on one!

Bringing the experience online

I created gif stickers for the event so our audience on social could also participate in the celebration. During the event we highlighted some of the women engineers at Coursera and reshared the postcard designs with a larger audience.

T-shirts and Zoom backgrounds

For the recruiting team on-site and virtually I created coordinating Zoom backgrounds and t-shirts.

Recreating our in-office interview experience

Our fabricator sent over a mockup for the interview room that utilized the same look and feel as our booth, but a room you'd sit in for an hour didn't need to be bright and attention grabbing.

I wanted the interview room to feel like our office in Mountain View so candidates would get an idea of what working at Coursera might be like. In my design plan I specified soft plush chairs like we had all around our headquarters and a table similar to the desks we all worked at. To make the space as warm and inviting as our offices, I brought the outside in with plants, and used home-y floor lamps for lighting. I also instructed the fabricator to choose finishes close to Coursera's brand colors. Below is my moodboard and the finalized interview room design.