Alvaria
Enterprise workforce platform at scale
Design Ops
Culture Building
Pixel Party
Contribution
Host; Design Leadership
Duration
2 years
Date
2024-2026
TL; DR : Building the culture behind the work
I saw our growing design team becoming more siloed, so I created Pixel Party to bring the energy back. What started as a bi-weekly hangout became a design ops ritual that increased visibility, sparked collaboration, and strengthened our design culture.
20+
Pixel Parties hosted
30+
Designers connected across Product, Brand, Web & Motion
2× / month
A recurring space for sharing, experimenting & playing
Internal + external
Invited guests from other teams & outside the company to bring fresh perspectives
↑ Visibility became a habit.
Designers regularly saw what others were making and learned across disciplines.
↑ Collaboration started earlier.
People brought problems into the room before they became handoff conversations.
↑ A culture of play
Creative experiments gave designers space to bring their interests, personality, and curiosity into the work.
↑ Design found its voice
Through Pixel Party and encouragement from peers, designers built confidence to share ideas beyond design. More began volunteering for monthly product demos, previously dominated by engineering.
Where It All Started:
I came back from Config with a problem.
At Config 2024 in SF, 7000 designers in one room. Ideas everywhere. People making, sharing, debating, getting excited about design.
Then I came back to work, the energy was gone.😅
Meanwhile, as a company, we were growing fast, but getting disconnected. Product. Brand. Web. Motion. Nearly 20+ designers, all working across different projects.
I saw an opportunity to use design ops to connect the dots: More visibility. More collaboration. More creative energy.
A space to play
I created Pixel Party as a space for designers to play, make, and think together. Every two weeks, we tried something new: naming our design system, vibe coding weird ideas, making digital zines, designing emoji set, creating a team playlist, or making intentionally bad designs…
Only one rule: Make it fun, not another meeting.
Design started taking up more space
Through the parties, we discovered the people behind the work: the basketball obsessive, the musical theater kid, the zine maker. We invited speakers from across the company and beyond, made things together, and even brought a DJ set into the office.
Designers started showing up differently, too. More shared their work at 500+ person company wide demos, shifting a space traditionally led by engineering. Some Pixel Party experiments even found their way into real product work.
The team felt more connected, creative, and alive.
I learned what design leadership can be
I started Pixel Party because I didn’t want the energy from Config to disappear.
Two years and 20+ sessions later, I realized I wasn’t recreating a conference. I was creating a culture where that energy could come from the team itself.
I learned that leadership is designing the environment for designers to play, speak up, and do their best work.
That’s the kind of leader I want to be.
