July 2021: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility with Ruth Kikin-Gil

How to design AI products responsibly and why it matters.

Responsible AI is a human-centred approach to developing, designing, and deploying AI and ML products. It’s principled, collaborative, proactive and contextual and it is critical that we all start practicing it now.

In her talk, Ruth will explain why it is important, and clarify when to practice it, why should designers care, and what can you do to start tomorrow.

About Ruth Kikin-Gil

Ruth is a Responsible AI + design strategist that focuses on product innovation. Her career path at Microsoft took her from an innovation lab to a strategy team, to designing future experiences in Office, and to developing, evangelizing, and implementing Responsible AI practices. She is a co-creator of the Guidelines for Human-AI interaction and teaches design at the University of Washington.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthkikingil/
Twitter: @RuthKikinGil
Writings:

The rise of the Demigod designer. God created the world with a word. With… | by Ruth Kikin-Gil | UX Collective (uxdesign.cc)

Humanity-Centered Design. How ethics will change the conversation… | by Ruth Kikin-Gil | Microsoft Design | Medium

AI ❤ Design. How AI can enhance the design process. | by Ruth Kikin-Gil | Machine Learnings

Please register for this free event

July 15 2021
5:30pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

May 2021: UX Community Shorts

Join us for the Spring Edition of uxWaterloo Community Shorts!

Our community is filled with people doing great UX work in the field and this month at uxWaterloo, we’re excited to host a range of local UXers that will share part of their practice with us. Topics will include interviewing users with hearing loss, advanced journey mapping, intersections across UX domains, remote testing, and UX in a paediatric care setting.

This is going to be a fun night!

Join us and hear from:
Olamide Olatoye: User Study for Implementation of Sepsis Best Practice Advisory in General Paediatric Care
Matt Jones: Visualizing the Sales Process
Sam Jones Faulkner: Making User Interviews Accessible for People with Hearing Loss
Lorraine Randell: The Power of 10 Revisited – Bringing together Academia, Research, Design, and Digital worlds.
Isiah Simas: Remote User Testing for Educational Simulations

Online event link will be shared closer to the date.

Note that this will be a live streaming event. For what I hope are obvious reasons we won’t be sitting together in a physical space!

Please register for this free event

May 20 2021
5:30pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

March 2021: Design Digital Products for Africa

With Africa being a fast growing and developing continent around technology compared to other more developed regions like Europe, America – designing digital products requires the product development team especially designers to approach problems differently to create an experience that blends in well with its population. During the course of this talk, we would cover important keynotes that should be taken into consideration while creating local experiences through digital products.

About Perrie

Peace Ojemeh (Perrie) is a product designer living in Nigeria. She helps organisations & communities design, maintain & improve the quality of their products. She is currently consulting with the African Union, the International Telecommunication Union, and UN Women to bring more women into technology. Also, building a diverse community and leading the design team at Open Source Community Africa (@oscafrica), a movement that promotes and educates everything open source within Africa.

Peace believes so much in the essence of community & collaboration. In the past years, She has helped to build, maintain and grow some amazing communities, within and beyond Africa.

Note the special 8:00am EST start time for this event.

Note that this will be a live streaming event. For what I hope are obvious reasons we won’t be sitting together in a physical space!

Please register for this free event

March 25th, 2021
8:00am ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

January 2021: UX research and ethnographic design for humanitarian technology

Eriol Fox has been working in the non-profit, humanitarian technology sector for the past two years immersed in how to build technology products and services that empower and give access to people in the global south or ‘developing countries’ often around difficult topics like Genocide, Democracy, gender-based violence and in difficult circumstances such as informal settlements (slums) and areas where radicalisation is high.

When we think about the future and progression of design, how do we think in a way that explicitly includes places and communities still ‘coming online’ and how technology and society operates differently across borders.

This talk summarises recent research and UX design for humanitarian projects and how to approach difficult topics when researching these areas or these countries along with some tips for those looking to work or learn more about how to conduct UX research in these places.

About Eriol Fox

Eriol has been working as a Designer for 10 years working in for-profits and then moving into NGO’s and open source software organisations, working on complex problems like sustainable food systems, peace building and crisis response technology. Eriol now works at Open Food Network and is part of the core team at Open Source Design (http://opensourcedesign.net/) and Human Rights Centred Design working group (https://hrcd.pubpub.org/).

Eriol is a non-binary, queer person who uses they/them pronouns.

Note that this will be a live streaming event. For what I hope are obvious reasons we won’t be sitting together in a physical space!

Please register for this free event

January 21 2021, 2020
5:30pm to 7:00pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

December 2020: A Designer’s Guide for Mixed Reality, Ana Sofia Gonzalez

Mixed Reality is hot right now. What brings more value is having your custom Holograms, aka custom 3D models, in the experience.

MR is the newest trendy thing. However, what brings value is having your custom Holograms, aka custom 3D models, in context and experience. Why does learning this matters? It is similar as creating a picture in Photoshop and then you don’t know how to put it in your app or share it. With Mixed Reality becoming more common, as designers, we need to understand the file formats and how to make it easier for users to create their own content. But how does someone do that? It is such a complex process not many people know. There are so many CAD and 3D making solutions with different paradigms that I will break it down which ones work best for MR.

1) You must know which program you are using. Depending on the program, you will be using parametric geometry vs. polygonal geometry. The 3D standards use real-time rendering applications that require models to be represented as a triangulated polygon surface. Don’t worry I will explain these technical words.

2) Optimize your model to the device you will be using, either mobile, desktop, VR, or HoloLens

3) Convert it into the file format industry standard GLB

4) Upload to your MR product and/or device

These steps sound easy, however there are still a few limitations on every step. You will be finding challenges, or see why your 3d model takes too much to upload or why it is not rendered beautifully.

Also Ana Sofia will be taking on the diverse products of Microsoft Mixed Reality products in multiple platforms.

About Ana Sofia

Ana Sofia is a Senior Designer at Microsoft. She delights in democratizing innovative solutions. With over 8 years of experience in the tech industry, she includes diverse perspectives into her designs. She knows that adoption to innovations might be difficult. By sharing her insights on Mixed Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Innovative Work Cultures, she helps others adopt innovation and retain users for over 20 year old products. Ana Sofia is also an advocate for D&I initiatives by being a chapter leader at Microsoft Latinx Employee resource group, creating allyships for minorities, and mentoring. When she is not working or volunteering, you can find her dancing and exploring unknown lands.

Note that this will be a live streaming event. For what I hope are obvious reasons we won’t be sitting together in a physical space!

Please register for this free event

Thursday December 17, 2020
5:30pm to 7:00pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

September 2020: UX Community Shorts

Wondering how others in our area are doing UX?

This month, we have a great line-up of local (and not-so-local) UXers, who will share their experiences and learnings from the field. Topics this month range from behavioral barriers reviews, remote design, data-driven UX, design for virtual marketplaces, and designing in a company with low UX maturity.

It’ll be a great night with lots of ideas.

Join us and hear from:

Joanne Lau: Working in a company with low UX maturity
Barnali Banerji: Data driven experience design – Using UX analytics
Laura MacNeil: carib.farm – A virtual marketplace
Jeff Bos: Remote UX design and evaluation – Case study
Janna Cameron: Behavioural Barriers Reviews

Online event link will be shared closer to the date.

Please register for this free event

Thursday September 17, 2020
5:30pm to 7:00pm ET
Join remotely from wherever you are!

August 2020: Informal (Remote!) Pub Meetup

Hi everyone! As part of our usual summer tradition, uxWaterloo is hosting an informal happy-hour session where we can all connect and catch-up… remotely!

How’s that going to work, you ask?

We’re being given an exclusive sneak-peak at a new remote video tool from a promising start-up in Toronto called Rally. The tool recreates the experience of an informal gathering, where people can move freely between tables, while also hearing the general chatter of everyone in the room. It’s simple, impressively natural, and loads of fun. You’ll get it right away.

What’s even more fun is we’re going to have the founders of the start-up join us to share a bit of their story and some of the key design decisions that led them to where they are today with the product. They’re excited to hear from the uxWaterloo community about our experience using the tool for the first time.

As you can imagine, the Rally team’s servers are running red-hot, so we have a limit of 50 people for this session. Get your spot now!

We’ll follow up closer to the date with a link.

Please register for this free event

Thursday August 20th, 2020
5:30pm to 7:00pm ET
Join remotely from wherever you are!

Job: Mobile UI Designer, Genesys, Kitchener-Waterloo (Remote)

Role

Reporting to the Director of Product Management, this a 2-month contract position focused on developing a material system design for a mobile application. Working within a small innovation team, this role will work closely with product and engineering in a fast-paced, highly collaborative environment. The candidate should be an expert in Android mobile UI design.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, document and uphold visual style across all product UI components
• Develop clear, functional UI wireframe prototypes
• Collaborate with product and engineering to achieve the desired functionality and visual design of the UI
• Visualize, propose, and present creative design concepts in a variety of visual styles
• Generate UI assets and work with programmers to implement to required specifications
• Constantly move the design forward and maintain an awareness of feedback from user testing
• Participate in user interviews and user testing
• Work remotely with a distributed team

Qualifications

• 3-5 years’ experience designing high-quality mobile applications
• Expert understanding of UI/UX design trends, concepts, techniques, and implementation
• Experience working directly with a development team, ideally in a startup or early stage company
• Excellent graphic design and illustration skills
• Proficient in Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, and other relevant tools
• Ability to quickly conceptualize, present, execute and iterate on ideas and designs
• Experience with user testing and user research
• Excellent communication, interpersonal and organization skills

Apply directly to: james.hvezda[at]genesys.com

February 2020: The UX of tubes: Building a UX research practice in a traditional, physical-product industry

User experience research (UXR) is commonplace in digital design. But, what happens when you add UXR to the product development process for physical products—and in a traditional and regulation-filled industry? What are the similarities vs. differences for those practicing UXR? And, how might you integrate a brand new UXR practice/role with pre-existing processes and teams?

Nicole Strong is a consumer anthropologist who, for the past 2.5 years, has been establishing an Insight and Ideation practice at the leading manufacturer of thermoplastic pipes and fittings in North America. These “tubes” she works with can be small enough to fit in her hand or large enough to stand inside. And, the fittings that attach to them can be complex, multi-part assemblies. On a given day, Nicole could be travelling the continent with top-secret prototypes, facilitating an ideation workshop or training session, working on a survey, posting hundreds of sticky notes, meeting with inventors, or giving out prizes for the company-wide product idea submission program that she runs. This summer, Nicole even spent two weeks in India working on a digital project for a sister company there. Prior to her current role, Nicole was a founding member of a customer insight consulting practice. She did UX and CX projects for both digital- and physical-product companies; they made server hardware, server farms, stock market software, ecommerce software, loans, insurance, auto parts, tractors and more. Join us for this session to learn more about her journey and explore the world of UXR with physical products.

Please register for this free event

Thursday February 20, 2020
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, 2nd floor
[View on Google Maps]

January 2020: Growing Designers: A Conversation with Faire’s Robin Bigio

Every designer knows the importance of their professional development, yet continues to struggle with assessing their performance to pinpoint areas of opportunity for growth. What makes it so difficult for us to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, and how can we partner with our leaders in building effective growth plans?

Join us at Faire for a candid discussion with their San Francisco based Head of Design, Robin Bigio, where he’ll discuss his growth path as a Designer and the challenges we all face in approaching intentional growth. Session will be moderated by Davis Neable, UX Director, Manulife.

About Robin:

Robin Bigio is an Italian-born, Silicon Valley-based Design leader that leverages the power of design-thinking to drive product innovation and organizational change.

After a brief stint at Renault’s HMI team in 2006, Robin joined the renowned design agency IDEO. In his time there he helped Western Digital create a universal design language that encompassed all products, BBVA build the future of the self-service channel(featured in the MOMA of NY) and designed the Faraday Electric Bicycle.

At IDEO.org, Robin led multidisciplinary teams in more than a dozen projects, including building a water delivery business in Nairobi, creating an early-childhood development movement for low-income parents in the US, and designing solar solutions for rural India.

As Head of Design at Faire, Robin is building a mission-driven organization that strikes the right balance between human-centered design and agile software development that allows them to ship great products every single week.

Please register for this free event

Thursday January 23, 2020
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Faire Office, 165 King St W, Kitchener, ON N2G 1A7
[View on Google Maps]