Retail Director
Chicago Design Museum Store

The Chicago Design Museum (ChiDM), which began as a month-long pop-up, engages and builds community through exhibitions and programs. When the pop-up transitioned into a permanent museum, I was asked to join the board as Retail Director. My brief was to design the vision for, lead the build of, and manage ChiDM’s first permanent store—all from scratch. The goal was to provide supplemental revenue to both ChiDM and the designers whose products the store sells—while supporting the community. 

The vision I developed was a store so beautiful and so carefully curated with Chicago-based design products that it felt like an extension of the exhibition space.

I collaborated with an architect to design the space and modular furniture that defined the store as a space and was flexible enough to be easily moved if the store or museum moved. 

I lead the team to use a human-centered design approach to prototype guests' experiences—that also integrated with business process—to determine best processes, then adjusted once the store was open.    

A Seamless Ecosystem of Experiences & Service Design

borreson-chidm-store-systems
 
 
 

Collaborators
ChiDM Board & Tanner Woodford
Furniture design: Tafhim Rahman
Store process and guest experience design: Gigg V. Hemwattakit
Illustration in store: Kiyomi Negi-Tran
Desk design and fabrication: Levi Borreson
Photos by: Jennifer Yu Photography and Carrie Allen