Grupo Santander designers met on 20-23 October at the second World Design Summit, led by the Santander Global Design Team and organized by the UX team at Santander Consumer USA. For four days, design employees from various areas and countries enjoyed workshops, activities and competitions with the common denominator of creating a community, learning, sharing ideas and having fun. 

“The summit allows us to hold a special event once a year where we can all come together and invite other teams and stakeholders to enrich discussion and ideas while building a user-focused design culture. We also tell success stories and share how each team is doing, development roadmaps, progress made on global projects, tools, agreements, etc. The Summit brings all Santander designers and researchers together as a single team, and that on its own is an excellent reason for these meetings”, according to Joaquín Márquez, Santander’s chief design officer.

This year’s summit, held virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, featured esteemed speakers such as 11:FS founder David Brear and American writer and user experience pioneer Jared Spool, as well as Grupo Santander designers.

“Turnout was very high and the commitment all teams showed truly impressed us. Remember, this is a virtual summit, 100% online, making it more difficult to keep attendees interested and involved. It’s true we worked hard to revamp the conference format and lighten it up (shortening it from four to two 3hour daily sessions)… but it was still an experiment since we hadn’t heard of any successful conferences held virtually during a global pandemic and, yet, it was a total hit. We are very grateful and proud”, says Márquez. 

The four days of workshops, activities and tests culminated in a closing ceremony to give awards to the winners of various categories and look back on the event.

Joaquín Márquez was responsible, alongside Global Head of New Ventures, Emerging Technologies and Customer Experience José Resendiz, for closing this year’s summit. Both highlighted how well this annual event had been received since it was first held, and remarked on the involvement of all group designers as well as the large community in the making to raise awareness of the role and talent of designers at Santander.

“Everyone worked hard to bring interesting, well-explained content. They participated directly in all talks and activities, and we noticed that, in addition to learning and growing professionally, people who work thousands of kilometres from each other and have probably never met in person are forging friendships and support networks. Achieving that is not easy, but we managed it by working together and are now eagerly awaiting the 2021 Summit, which we hope we’ll be able to hold in person in any country”, states Joaquín Márquez. 

Santander Design Manifesto

All the work Santander designers do is guided by nine principles found in the Santander Design Manifesto, a document that explains what design means at Grupo Santander and how designers offer customers the best digital experience every day.