Shadow to Light

Creating a connected physical and digital experience that examines how bias can limit the worldview of a creative.

Background

Airbnb’s mission around belonging and global inclusion challenges its employees to constantly examine the limitations of our perspectives and uncover the biases we bring into the creative process. So when San Francisco Design Week approached us with a challenge — could we create an installation that would align with their Question Everything theme? — we saw an opportunity to extend this conversation externally with our Shadow to Light installation.

Rather than address bias through only the design perspective, I guided our creative team to explore the topic through the lens of the media industry as well since there is overlap. Misinformation in the media was reaching a fever pitch at that time and we wanted to connect the execution to a relevant cultural conversation.

Designers and journalists are required to be inquisitive. The impact of bias in both industries can have a damaging effect on communities they serve. While bias can be a heavy topic that people avoid, my goal was to make this conversation as energizing and accessible as possible. We partnered with journalism startup News Deeply to create a dynamic experience for attendees that helped them uncover their biases and provided them with new resources to design with a more inclusive lens.

Our deliverables: 1) A 60-foot long installation in a shipping port, 2) An open source research tool (Another Lens) to extend the education beyond the physical experience, and 3) An an interactive digital experience for virtual guests. The experience concluded with an event featuring award-winning journalist Lara Setrakian delivering a talk titled: News from a World You Don’t Know. For more information, refer to the full case study I wrote on Airbnb.Design.

Results

7,000+ attendees explored the installation. Fast Company produced a retrospective on the project and we received exhibition requests from Helsinki Design Week, Mexico City Design Week and Berlin Design Week for the installation. SFDW expressed it was the best design week installation in 2017 and it upleveled their 2018 curatorial approach. It also became a symbol to the design community of Airbnb's commitment to consistently fighting discrimination through design.

Core Team /
Meredith Schomburg (Art directer + designer), Andrea Nguyen (Exhibit Designer), Anne Diaz (Researcher), Sarah Goerzen (Producer) and Dylan Hosey (Design builder).

My Role /
Project lead, Creative Director and Strategist

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