For Rachel Bandarenko, studying UX Design was less about switching careers and more about enhancing her skills in the industry to expand and elevate her career path.
Working as a Business Development Director in the live events industry, Rachel knew she was good at selling, but she was burnt out.
“I wanted to make a change. I love the meetings and events industry, so I didn’t want to get out—I wanted to transition to another role, one that was more creative and strategic. The combination of Designlab’s Design 101 course and UX Academy program provided me with the skills I needed to make that change,” says Rachel.
UX Design for Live Events
Rachel is now the Vice President of Creative Services at McVeigh Global Meetings and Events (MGME), and her department operates as a full-service creative production agency. She leads a creative team consisting of Creative Directors, Art Directors, and Graphic Designers; and on the production side, a team of Live and Virtual Event Producers, Technical Directors, and support staff.
While Rachel is not in the UX design industry in the traditional sense, she is designing user experiences—or rather, attendee experiences. Rachel’s team does research, persona creation, empathy mapping, user testing, building, and iterating to create engaging events and experiences. In today’s world of virtual events these designs live online, but once in-person events return these designs will come to life in the analog world.
At MGME Rachel and her team are on the leading edge of virtual meetings, and are currently creating engaging hybrid meetings for their clients as companies begin to dip their toes back into meeting in-person.
"Designing hybrid events is a lot of fun, but can be very challenging as well. A designer needs to create two experiences that seamlessly function as one event. That’s where having an innovative creative team is critical.”