Aerospace Leadership Offsite at the Dayton Digital Hub: Reimagining Strategy Through Brand and Experience Design

Aerospace leadership needed to realign on strategy and messaging after major organizational shifts, but traditional meetings lacked energy, focus, and brand cohesion. Disconnected narratives and siloed priorities made it difficult for leaders to rally around a unified vision or clearly communicate Aerospace’s innovation story. We transformed the offsite into a fully branded, immersive experience at the Dayton Digital Hub—blending experience design, marketing strategy, and storytelling across three interactive activations: the Persona Mosaic, Strategy Sandtable, and Future Exhibit. The result was renewed alignment, a clear narrative, and a reinvigorated sense of purpose that strengthened both internal culture and external communications.

Leadership Development Training: Defining Digital Transformation Strategies

Senior leaders recognized the need for digital transformation but lacked a unified framework to turn complex technical concepts into actionable strategies. Our team designed and facilitated Digital Horizon, a two-day immersive training that bridged this gap through hands-on exercises, real-world case studies, and collaboration with technical SMEs. The experience equipped leaders with tailored transformation plans, a shared digital vocabulary, and a reusable playbook of tools—empowering them to align strategy with execution and drive lasting innovation across their organizations.

Informing Strategic Innovation Requirements

Military leaders needed a way to align innovation priorities across a fragmented ecosystem of stakeholders and capabilities. Without shared visibility into needs or opportunities, investments risked duplication and delay. I led the  project team to deliver a human-centered, design-led effort to define, visualize, and validate future-state requirements through research, co-creation, and interactive prototyping. By combining stakeholder insight with facilitation design, we created a bounded problem set, an interactive concept prototype, and a strategic roadmap with measurable metrics—empowering leadership to fund, focus, and scale innovation efforts with clarity and alignment.

Creating a Shared Vision & Language for Innovation

The Army’s research and innovation arm sought to accelerate technology transition and scale innovation across its programs but lacked a unified strategy, metrics, and shared language to guide its growth. Without alignment, teams risked duplicating efforts and losing focus on long-term mission outcomes. Our project team led a series of facilitated design sessions to bring staff and leadership together around a collective Innovation Blueprint—defining shared values, guiding principles, and success metrics. Through stakeholder interviews, SWOT analysis, and scenario testing, we built a framework that strengthened collaboration, clarified priorities, and positioned the organization to scale its innovation impact across the enterprise.

Assessing the State of Innovation & Accelerating Measurable Impact

The organization’s Innovation & Readiness team was tasked with delivering new ideas, tools, and systems to improve mission readiness—but lacked a clear way to measure innovation maturity, align efforts, and demonstrate impact over time. Without visibility into gaps or progress, teams struggled to prioritize initiatives and secure resources for future innovation. Our project team led a comprehensive assessment using the Innovation Maturity Diagnostic (IMD) to evaluate readiness, surface opportunities, and define actionable metrics. We then facilitated the co-creation of an Innovation Blueprint outlining four strategic pillars and built a Metrics Playbook to track measurable outcomes—enabling leaders to align around a shared vision, strengthen accountability, and drive sustained innovation growth.

Mobilizing the Air Force to Win the Information War

As global adversaries leverage information as a weapon, the Air Force faced a critical challenge—how to operate and compete effectively in the evolving information environment. Without a shared understanding of this new battlespace or the tools to act within it, teams risked reacting rather than shaping outcomes. Our project team led a cross-service innovation sprint to map the information environment, identify operational gaps, and prototype actionable solutions. Through scenario-based exercises, wargaming, and co-creation, participants developed information environment maps, operational checklists, and scenario-tested solutions—establishing a new framework for how the Air Force plans, collaborates, and communicates in the information domain.

Standing up a Government Innovation Lab

A federal security agency needed to stand up an innovation lab but lacked the foundational strategy, structure, and cultural alignment to operationalize it. Without a clear operating model or shared understanding of innovation goals, the lab risked becoming a symbolic initiative rather than a functional engine for change. Our project team led the end-to-end design and facilitation process to define the lab’s purpose, culture, and strategy. We conducted discovery research, deployed the Innovation Maturity Diagnostic to assess readiness, and facilitated workshops to define success metrics, prototype an operating model, and gather stakeholder feedback. The result was a tested, data-driven framework and roadmap that positioned the lab to accelerate transformation across the agency—built and refined entirely during the height of COVID-19 through secure virtual collaboration.

Executive Briefing Center Usability Prototypes

The Executive Briefing Center sought to transform its physical space into an immersive experience that could communicate the firm’s most advanced capabilities through storytelling and design. Yet early concepts lacked cohesion—without a clear narrative framework or usability-tested prototypes, the activations risked being visually impressive but strategically disconnected. Our project team led the creative direction, research, and prototyping process to define the experience from story to structure. Through sensemaking interviews, immersive storytelling, and rapid prototyping, we developed and tested five multi-sensory activations that blended narrative, sound, light, and interaction. The result was a cohesive and compelling visitor journey that showcased innovation in motion—positioning the space as both an exhibition and an experience of the brand itself.

Modernizing a Critical Air Force Tool with Human-Centered Branding

A long-standing Air Force lifecycle management tool was essential for sustaining infrastructure but had lost user engagement and strategic clarity over time. Without a cohesive identity or intuitive interface, adoption lagged and modernization stalled. Our team led a full-scale redesign and rebrand to reimagine both the product and its perception — from name and narrative to interface and experience. Through mixed-method research, user interviews, and strategic design workshops, we surfaced key insights that informed a new product strategy, visual identity, and messaging framework. The result was a unified, human-centered brand and UX vision that secured executive buy-in and new funding for the tool’s next evolution.

Product Development & Strategy Using Agile Innovation

A legacy lifecycle management tool required faster modernization and stronger user alignment to meet evolving mission needs. Traditional development cycles were slow, siloed, and disconnected from the user community — leading to delays, redundant features, and limited adoption. Our project team designed a tailored agile product strategy grounded in human-centered design to accelerate delivery and ensure usability. We conducted in-depth user research, synthesized findings into a one-year product roadmap, and facilitated design sprints to define, prioritize, and prototype key requirements. The resulting roadmap and validated wireframes gave leadership a clear, data-driven path for development — reducing delivery time and aligning the product with real user needs.

User Feedback & Education Using Experiential Storytelling

As a complex lifecycle management tool expanded across multiple defense branches, users needed clearer understanding and stronger engagement to ensure adoption. Traditional training materials failed to connect emotionally or translate technical value into meaningful learning. Our project team designed and facilitated a virtual, multi-branch innovation sprint that used experiential storytelling to educate, inspire, and gather actionable feedback. We developed TED Talk–style multimedia segments, interactive breakout sessions, and visual learning tools that reached over 100 participants across Air Force, Space Systems Command, Army, and Navy communities. The result: a unified learning experience that not only captured critical user insights for tool development but also built community, buy-in, and sustained engagement across the enterprise.