WNKF: Weekly Native Knowledge Fest
Role: Program Creator & Instructor – Native Experience Quality
Scope: Cross-functional education for 200+ designers
Duration: 7+ months
Summary:
As part of a strategic push to elevate mobile experience quality, I founded WNKF (Weekly Native Knowledge Fest)—a recurring, judgment-free learning series designed to level-set native design expertise across our organization. Created in partnership with our VP of Experience Quality, WNKF became a key driver of improved consistency, quality, and collaboration across teams.
Problem:
Designers contributing to our flagship mobile apps had varied levels of education, experience, and familiarity with native platforms (iOS and Android), leading to inconsistent execution and a fragmented user experience.
Key Questions:
- How can we mature our design organization collectively?
- How do we train hundreds of designers efficiently and meaningfully?
- How do we ensure and measure experience quality?
Actions:
- Built and launched WNKF from the ground up:
- Developed curriculum, roadmap, and session plans
- Partnered with a content strategist and junior designer to ensure the series had a cohesive, flexible structure
- Held weekly 30-minute Zoom sessions, open to all teams
- Fostered a safe space for anonymous questions, open discussion, and ongoing learning
- Topics included platform-specific frameworks, motion principles, accessibility, grids, and design systems
- Introduced a Quality Checklist as part of our formal design review process
- Collected feedback via surveys and attendance tracking; reported results to senior leadership
- Boosted engagement through incentives (e.g., custom-branded Trapper Keepers for top attendees)
Results
Over the course of 19 live sessions, including five with guest speakers, WNKF drew between 100–200 designers weekly, becoming one of the most attended ongoing learning series in the org.
Designers reported immediate value, with feedback highlighting the clarity, depth, and energy of the sessions:
“I was vibing with all the material and felt like it just wasn’t long enough to cover everything.”
“This was some of the most thoughtful and insightful material I’ve ever seen… only maybe three people in my career have pulled off something like this.” —Senior Design Leader
Impact highlights:
- Design review failure rates declined as designers proactively applied mobile best practices
- Increased collaboration across lines of business, with shared terminology and critique culture
- WNKF became a recognized tool for onboarding and continuous learning, backed by VP-level support
- Recordings continue to be accessed regularly, demonstrating sustained value
Cultural Shift:
WNKF established mobile expertise as a collective priority, embedding continuous learning into the fabric of the design organization.we raise the bar on experience quality across mobile platforms.
For a more in-depth review, visit the case study or course materials.
FULL CASE STUDY
Skills
- UX Strategy
- Team Leadership
- Design Ops
- Curriculum Design
- Design QA
- Accessibility
- Mentoring
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Public Speaking
Course Feedback
“It was awesome! Learned a lot in just 20 minutes.”
“This was really useful to me, hoping this can be longer.”
“I was vibing with all the material and felt like it just wasn’t long enough to cover everything. It was amazing though! I can’t wait for the next class! ^-^”
“I like the analogies and imagery – especially Adam Hillman’s assemblage work! Looking forward to getting into more detail.”
“The class was great! It was presented in a very interesting and fun way. Learned a lot about design differences between iOS and Android.”
~ Anonymous attendee feedback
Kim authored and presented a series of brown bags around various design considerations (e.g. mobile, UDAAP examples, etc). It was some of the most thoughtful and insightful material I’ve ever seen, and I told Kim afterwards that across the many dozens of designers I’ve worked with over the years, only maybe 3 people including her possessed the breadth and depth needed to pull together that kind of rich material.
~ VP of Upper Funnel Product, Achieve