Reimagining What’s Up Thursday to strengthen XD culture

I co-defined the refreshed strategy behind What’s Up Thursday, a bi-weekly design wide event attended by 500+ designers. The implementation has caused a sustained 97% average satisfaction and ~6% increase per quarter.

2024

Design strategy / Content strategy / Project management

In person experiences

Background

What’s Up Thursday (WUT) is Capital One’s bi-weekly meeting for the design organization (XD), an anchor for communication, culture, and shared learning across a globally distributed 500+ person team. Over time, however, participation had begun to decline. Once a vibrant forum, WUT was struggling to sustain engagement, particularly from associates and senior leaders.

Recognizing the role this ritual played in fostering belonging and alignment, we led a redesign of WUT to restore its relevance and strengthen community across the organization.

The refresh of WUT has gained a quarterly satisfaction score of 97% and the average attendance for 2024 was 245 individuals which was a 46.14% increase from 2023.

User problem

Despite its strong legacy, WUT’s format no longer matched the evolving needs of the design organization:

  • Attendance was dropping, especially among associates who felt disconnected from leadership and larger organizational initiatives.

  • Content had become predictable, leading to lower satisfaction and less participation.

  • Leadership presence was inconsistent, unintentionally signaling a lack of priority.

The result: associates were disengaging, missing key information, and experiencing a growing sense of distance from leadership and peers.

Hypothesis

If we redesigned WUT to prioritize belonging, visibility, and leadership connection, then:

Associates would feel a stronger sense of inclusion and ownership, leading to higher attendance and participation.

Leaders would view WUT as a strategic channel, showing up more consistently and modeling engagement.

Overall satisfaction with WUT would increase, creating ripple effects in team morale and retention.

Discovery

XD (Experience Design), Capital One’s design organization, has been facing a steady decline in associate engagement. Internal engagement surveys and qualitative research highlight a fragmented culture, dwindling participation in design wide events, and a deteriorating sense of XD’s shared identity. Teams are made up of associates with various tenure and levels and don’t map to geographic locations.

Why it matters

Industry research (Forrester, 2024) reinforces that intentional culture-building is a critical driver of the in-office experience and directly tied to talent retention. For XD, strengthening community and belonging isn’t just a “nice to have”—it is a strategic necessity to retain and grow top talent.

To understand root causes, we conducted qualitative interviews, ran surveys, and audited past WUT content.

Key research insights included:

  • Declining engagement in XD-wide events

  • Little to no sense of cross-tower connection

  • Lower engagement scores year-over-year

  • XD’s centralized identity had deteriorated

Culture-building initiatives succeed when they intentionally provide meaningful connection opportunities that align with associates’ day-to-day experiences and career aspirations.

If we intentionally invest in What’s Up Thursday (WUT) by improving the experience design, elevating leadership presence, and curating relevant content, then we will:

  • Increase associate engagement in XD-wide events

  • Strengthen the in-office experience

  • Reinforce a unified XD identity that can attract and retain top talent

Context

Design

With this context in mind, we approached What’s Up Thursday not as an “event” but as a touchpoint in the associate journey where culture, leadership, and meaningful content intersect.

The redesign focused on strategic design levers and improvements.

The whole process involved research, stakeholder alignment, ideation prioritization mapping, efficient programmatic rollout.

    • Provide lunch to drive attendance and casual connection

    • Book reliable, central spaces to reduce friction

    • Design moments for associates to actively shape culture through sharing stories or spotlighting different teams

    • Encourage VP+ leaders to attend and model engagement

    • Position leaders as storytellers and culture champions

    • Elevate perceived value of the sessions through senior visibility

    • Align topics with XD priorities and annual objectives

    • Balance strategic updates with associate-centered content (team case studies, SLT panels)

    • Create a repeatable content framework to ensure consistency and timeliness

    • Developed a repeatable operational framework including hosting roles, run-of-show templates, and prep workflows to ensure sustainability

Process to refresh WUT strategy

Learnings

Designing culture isn’t about one or two events, it’s about consistently curating experiences that connect people back to purpose and each other.

The redesigned WUT strategy produced measurable and lasting improvements:

  • Attendance increased by 46%, from an average of 168 participants in 2023 to 245 in 2024.

  • Satisfaction rose to 97%, up from 89% year over year.

  • VP+ attendance became consistent, visibly reinforcing leadership commitment for an organization of 500+ designers.

  • Associates reported feeling more connected to leadership and the broader org, contributing to stronger community and retention.

Beyond immediate engagement metrics, the new structure positioned WUT as a strategic internal communications asset, a scalable model that can evolve with the organization.