NoMad Theater

Designing Connection Through Improv

Role: UX & Community Experience Lead

Timeline: March 2023 – Present

Type: Experience Design / Community Strategy / Service Flow

Reimagining community improv through design thinking, emotional presence, and strategic storytelling.

Overview

Nomad Theater is a grassroots performance collective in New York City that blends improvisation, community building, and artistic experimentation. I joined as a core organizer and led the UX and experience design efforts for public workshops, showcases, onboarding systems, and community engagement. From space design to storytelling to flow mapping, I approached the experience as a living system.

NoMad Theater

Improv Community Ecosystem

  1. Led user journey design across events, from audience onboarding to performance feedback loops

  2. Designed visual systems: posters, templates, workshop sign-ups

  3. Co-facilitated improv workshops and conducted participant interviews

  4. Developed early-stage service blueprint & stakeholder mapping to understand internal dynamics and decision friction

  5. Identified pain points in scaling and delegation; proposed actionable systems for sustainable growth

My Role

UX Strategist · Community Designer · Event Facilitator · Visual Storyteller

  1. Reframed public workshops as experience prototypes to gather live feedback

  2. Integrated emotional storytelling into design rituals (e.g., check-in systems, warm-up rituals, showcase flows)

  3. Created onboarding & communication flows to clarify expectations for first-time participants

  4. Proposed ecosystem-level structure to align improv and theater tracks under one brand

  5. Drafted stakeholder roles and potential succession plan

Key Contributions

  1. Increased community participation and repeat attendance by building emotional safety

  2. Enabled smoother team operations with clearer structure and delegation plans

  3. Fostered a sense of co-ownership among volunteers and workshop leaders

  4. Created a flexible framework for event iteration and future team onboarding

Impact

UX as diagnosis, not just design.

Current Challenges

  1. Lack of sustained leadership and clearly defined team roles

  2. Emotional labor burden on a small number of core organizers

  3. Friction between vision-holders and decision-makers

  4. Difficulty balancing improv and theater programming under shared resources

  5. Unclear communication hierarchy and project priorities

This project deepened my belief that UX isn’t limited to digital screens—it’s embedded in how people enter a room, how they’re welcomed, how they interact, and how meaning unfolds. Nomad became a live sandbox where I used systems thinking, storytelling, facilitation, and design rituals to weave connection.

Reflections

To me, UX design is about holding space—physically, emotionally, structurally—for humans to meet each other more fully.

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