When I was involved in the design and implementation of a virtual onboarding environment for new employees, our vendor provided us with a couple dozen off-the-shelf architectural environments to use as virtual rooms. At first we had been blown away by their look-and-feel and couldn’t wait to pick one.

True–none of the environments looked like “us.” But we found one we were excited about using.

Then a c-suite manager mentioned that she hated the hexagonal areas of sunshine on the floors in the pictures.

After tinkering with the images for a few days, I became convinced that we needed to throw them all out.

So I spent an evening with my home architecture program creating a mock-up that incorporated elements found in our actual offices: colors, finishes, furniture, etc. I presented the idea to my manager and she recommended the concept to the rest of senior leadership.

I worked with our vendor to match their specifications and created a completely unique environment that was packed with our look, feel, and branding. I spent a day staging areas and photographing them and then time crafting the virtual onboarding rooms.    

Our vendor was so impressed with our environments, content, and overall execution that we were asked to be keynote speakers at their 2017 virtual conference.

My passion for high-quality execution extends well beyond the packaging of a product. A pretty wrapper can’t disguise a lack of planning, poor content, or awful delivery. The beauty of my designs is intentionally more than skin deep.