Norma Penner

So it begins, the speaker blogs once more! We’ll kick it off this time with Norma Penner. Visual Design Lead at Fjord in Toronto, Sheridan grad, and a girl with a wicked cool attitude, Norma aims to change human interaction with design and make it more meaningful. Partnering with brands like Abercrombie & Fitch, Vail, Pfizer, Coca Cola, and Jeep, her conversation with us was a great way to flip things around and teach us that it’s not all just for the aesthetic. Our design can really change things and make things better, easier, simpler. With lots of experience, awards, education, and industry involvement, Norma was a great start to 2017.

Her LinkedIn reads

"As a VD lead at one of Fjord's newest locations, my passion lies in transforming businesses through human-centered design. Over the years I have partnered with incredible companies which have offered me a wide range of experience across sectors both inside and outside of the digital space. I specialize in unpacking the heart and soul of a brand, pushing it to unexpected places and filtering in surprise and delight across touch points. Simply put, I am just a human who aims to make the lives of other humans better, easier and happier from small, everyday interactions to large, transformative experiences."

Education

University of Waterloo - Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts

Ulster University - Fine Art & Visual Communications

Sheridan College - New Media Design

Work History

SapientNitro | 2010 - 2013

Tribal Worldwide | 2013 - 2016

Fjord | 2015 - Present

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Fjord

Who is Fjord anyway? Fjord is a company that puts design at the heart of every problem [they] solve. They solve business problems through design in two parts:

Service Design - exploring the client's needs, finding pain points, and defining the problems that need to be solved

Experience Design - Taking those findings and solving the problem

The Toronto office was started by Norma and her business buddy, Scott. The office now hosts ten employees and counting. But that’s not everyone, the Fjord family of 850+ extends across 22 offices around the globe.

Who Does Fjord Work For?

Pfizer, RBC, Carnival Cruise, to name a few. I’ll specifically break done a recent Pfizer experience for you.

In the fall of last year, Pfizer tasked Fjord to reimagine the future customer experience for healthcare practitioners in Europe. They interviewed 231 doctors and pharmacists to discover that the interaction between patients and doctors has totally changed. Doctors now face so many obstacles and barriers, feeling like they have to limit everything and that their hands are totally tied.

With their interviews, Fjord synthesised all of the transcripts and turned it into a customer state journey map. This is a map of what a day in the life looks like for the customer. For this special case, they had to change their usual journey map to something less linear for doctors, who never experience a day the same as the one before.

Next was the Rumble: a 2 day workshop, 6 weeks into the project. Fjord brings all their findings to the client to come out with a future state. The prep for that included cleaning, flowers, hide and seek, sleep, and 9k in printed artifacts. They held 30 participants from Pfizer worldwide in New York.

Now they start to derive themes from the Rumble, and created a future state blueprint for general practitioners through Pfizer. Their goal, “Advance a simplified experience of care with the essential tools to help practitioners at the right time and in the right context of care.” They then created a concept book that would help bring the blueprint to life. The four concepts included: well beings, treatment sync for general practitioners to track progress, CUREator (a program that allow general practitioners to sift through overwhelming amounts of information to find exactly what they need), and Switch, which would make every piece of content meaningful for the audience (one in doctor speak, and one that was easy for a regular patient to understand).

Five Tips for Survival

1: Network. Network. Network.

You are only as good as your reputation, this means that you better not burn any bridges. Instead, make a point to boost each other, help each other out. The industry is small and odds are, we will be seeing each other again at some point.

2. Embrace change.

It’s takes a survivor mentality to stick out this career, but you need to make changes when you get bored, sour, or stale. Find a way to put yourself in the uncomfortable; move to a different city, refresh networks, just make sure to keep growing and moving forward.

3. Learn the art of selling.

Your design needs to be translated. While you could let the work speak for itself, it won’t be very effective. Clients buy you before they buy your work. If you believe in your work, they will too. When it comes to presentation, keep it casual. The more prepared you are, the more comfortable you’ll be. The more comfortable, the more confident. The more confidence you have, the more confidence they’ll have in you. The work is their mission, not yours. Ground your story in their big picture and make sure they sell it to their boss.

4. Have a side passion.

Norma trains ex-racehorses in the countryside, and has been a rider since she was 9. Side passions give you the break that is needed to refresh your mind. Without them, your whole life will become work.

5. Find your happy place within design.

“Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman

Some Final Notes from Norma

In the industry now, Sketch is becoming a big player, so it’s better to know it now! In addition to that, learn InVision, because you won’t be doing much coding when you initially land a job as a designer. When you are designing, remember that branding in key. Good branding makes everything better! Finally, respect your client and lean on them because in the end, it’s not about your personal taste and what you want, it’s about them and their needs. Remove yourself a little and don’t take things so personally. Follow these simple rules and it should make the design world a little easier to handle.

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Being our first speaker of 2017, Norma’s special energy was a great way to kick-start blogging again. She has worked many incredible roles since graduating from Sheridan and it’s really inspiring to see how her design and how ours could potentially make a real difference in someone’s life. Full of energy, experience, and enthusiasm, this is a special thank you for Norma for re-inspiring our class.

If you’d like to know more about Norma, check out her LinkedIn, Fjord for future projects, and her website!

Want to get in contact directly?

Send her an email at normapenner@gmail.com