Half-Baked
Designed a platform for sharing in-progress ideas, creating a culture where experimentation and unfinished thinking are valued.
Role: Experience Design & Facilitation Lead
Scope: Cornell campus → NYC → Beijing · annual series
Overview
Half-Baked is an event series designed to create a space for people to share ideas that are still in progress.
As students approached graduation, many had developed thoughtful ideas for improving campus culture, but lacked a platform to share them. These ideas, shaped by years of experience, often went unheard or unrealized.
In response, I designed Half-Baked as a format that encourages people to share unfinished ideas, creating a culture where experimentation, feedback, and iteration are embraced rather than avoided.
Impact
Half-Baked created a new outlet for sharing ideas, shifting the culture toward openness, experimentation, and collaboration.
Annual event series established at Cornell
Expanded to NYC and Beijing through the Schwarzman Scholars Program
Enabled cross-disciplinary participation across campus
Created a culture where in-progress ideas are shared and discussed
Sparked ongoing dialogue and iteration on community-driven ideas
Designing the Experience
The experience was designed to make sharing unfinished ideas feel approachable, safe, and engaging.
Rather than polished presentations, speakers shared “half-baked” ideas in a structured but low-pressure format. The Half Pecha Kucha format (10 slides, 20 seconds each) created just enough constraint to keep ideas focused, while reinforcing that they did not need to be fully formed.
The environment was intentionally designed to feel informal and community-driven, blending elements of a slumber party and a TED Talk to lower pressure while maintaining a sense of occasion.
Speakers shared ideas on topics like mental health, sustainability, and community building, creating a cross-disciplinary exchange that encouraged feedback and iteration.
Principles
In-progress ideas → encourage experimentation
Structured constraint → enables participation
Low-pressure environment → reduces fear of sharing
Community-driven → invites diverse perspectives
Cross-disciplinary → sparks unexpected connections
Designing for In-Progress Thinking
Innovation often begins with ideas that are not yet fully formed.
By creating a platform for unfinished ideas, Half-Baked reframed sharing as part of the creative process, not the final step. This shift made it easier for people to test, refine, and build on ideas together.
This project reinforced that designing for innovation requires creating environments where people feel comfortable sharing early, incomplete thoughts, allowing better ideas to emerge through collaboration.
