September 2021: Guarding against UX Theatre, with Tanya Snook

In the age of immediacy, as we’re being rushed to deliver more with less, the users sometimes get left behind in the design process. It’s not enough to think from a user perspective and role-play with post-its to generate designs. Are you performing UX theatre and just acting user-centered? Tanya Snook is going to help you learn to recognize the signs of UX theatre.

Tanya Snook is a user experience designer who builds citizen and employee experiences in the Government of Canada. Tanya is a founder and co-chair of CanUX, Canada’s longest running user experience conference. Tanya writes about user experience and design leadership at spydergrrl.com or you can find her on Twitter as @spydergrrl.

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September 16 2021
12:00pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

August 2021: How We Get Wicked Good, with Karen VanHouten

Did you ever wonder why so much of our work seems harder than it should be? Does it feel like you are constantly working at altitude, trying to do more work with less oxygen? Well, Karen’s first job in tech was in 1993. That’s almost 30 years across different roles and companies, all in technology and digital products. And no matter how much more skilled we all get, things just seem to be getting harder. How do we move from barely surviving to thriving in our work?

In this talk, we’ll discuss how we get wicked good, moving from competency and mastery to sustainability, even in environments that seem to be set up for failure and eventual burnout. We’ll explore how to make our work spaces kinder, more inclusive, and more supportive of long term engagement and growth while at the same time encouraging us to be more thoughtful and intentional about the design decisions and career choices we make.

About Karen VanHouten
Karen is a curious skeptic with a fascination for beautiful messes, fostered over 20 years working in UX for enterprise solutions. Currently working as a Principal Strategist with OST (Open Systems Technologies), she helps organizations develop holistic digital strategies that account for the varied and complex human elements required to inform successful digital initiatives. She is passionate about intentionally designed work environments that support inclusion, collaboration, and space for play and experimentation. She also swears a lot, especially on twitter.

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August 19 2021
12:00pm ET
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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

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

June 2021: When Research Excludes – Reflecting on the research process and the black lives matter movement

The Black Lives Matter (#BLM) movement is raising awareness, conversation and reflection for many disciplines, including ours. Some organizations’ reactions have inspired serious changes and pledges, while others have made for social media fodder.

It is our collective responsibility to ask ourselves as researchers and designers where and how we can raise awareness and open conversation so that we steer away from deep-rooted biases. At twig+fish, we turned this lens inward on our own research practice and asked ourselves where we could improve. Too often as consultants, we are faced with organizations who are stringent with their research resources. In our continued reflections, we asked ourselves what has a “cost of not doing?” that directly relates to the #BLM movement?

Join Meena Kothandaraman, co-founder of twig+fish as she shares where resource-poor research processes are not only vulnerable to neglecting the Black voice, but more likely to completely exclude it.

As a woman of colour who has asked how she can support the BLM discourse, Meena incorporated learnings from this twig+fish study into the firm’s consulting work, as well as her graduate classroom at Bentley University.

Please join Meena for an open discussion!

About Meena

With over 30 years of experience, Meena has consulted to emphasize the strategic value and positioning of qualitative research in the design of product, space and service. Meena is fascinated by the complexity of human behavior, and applies a credible, structured and transparent approach to integrating human stories and anecdotes into mainstream processes. This ensures that research activities provide the best service to the organization, and that learning objectives are addressed to maximize potential.

Meena is a founding member of twig+fish, a research and strategy practice based in Boston, MA, that espouses these research beliefs, while maintaining a utopic work-life balance. She is also a key Lecturer in the Bentley University Human Factors and Information Design (HFID) graduate program. Over her 20+year tenure, her capstone qualitative research course has guided now-leading practitioners to integrating meaningful and successful research practices.

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!

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June 17 2021
12:00pm 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!

April 2021: Designing a gaming platform for kids, with Carina Ngai

To design for kids, we need to apply inclusive design principles. This is a population that is still developing their verbal and written skills. I will discuss how we explore the topic of trust and safety, how we allow kids to explore different identities via avatars and social play. We are envisioning a new form of social playground with new social interactions that are inclusive and diverse. I will also share insights from designing in the gaming space, and how designers translate research insights into actionable for products.

About Carina Ngai

Carina Ngai has been a designer in UX / Product / Research, specialized in finding product-market fit for new product categories, and emerging technologies. For the last 2 years, she has been the product design manager at Roblox, a popular social gaming platform for kids, leading the player experience design team.

Carina’s design portfolio spans across many domains in the industry such as gaming, augmented reality, education, marketplace, creation tools, data and privacy. Among them were Google, Netflix, Samsung, and Adobe. She is also active in the design community and often speaks about the practice of design research and inclusive design in various design conferences.

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!

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April 29 2021
5:30pm ET
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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!

February 2021: Duet, an intercontinental collaboration that makes connections

Duet is a digital artwork about finding space for reflection, expression and connection in our daily lives, an intimate experience between strangers.

Duet is a collaboration between Invisible Flock (UK) and Quicksand (India).

Duet is an app that pairs participating individuals and invites them to exchange details of their lives by answering a question a day, building new anonymous space and connections. Prompted by Duet, a participant gradually builds a picture of their partner and their surroundings through anonymous shared messages, while also finding a moment for reflection in their own lives and surroundings.

Duet is a work that seeks to challenge the ways in which we interact online. Duet is not social media, it is also not a game. Instead it operates in a different space – a slow, dreamy experiential space where you are invited to share small glimpses of life with someone new.

Quicksand

Quicksand is an interdisciplinary consultancy. We facilitate the creation of meaningful experiences through design research and innovation.

Babitha George, a partner in Quicksand, believes in the strength of interdisciplinary approaches; her prior work in education prompted her to actively think about non-traditional roles of design thinking, subsequently leading her to steer Quicksand’s social innovation projects. Babitha anchors Quicksand’s Bangalore studio and is also on the Advisory Board of the Victor Papanek Foundation.

Romit Raj is a software developer, researcher and systems architect. He has been developing and supporting technology projects for over a decade. At Quicksand, Romit leads several projects that have broad technology components. Recently, Romit has been working towards building Quicksand’s portfolio in the environment and conservation sectors.

Invisible Flock

Invisible Flock are an award-winning interactive arts studio based at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park operating at the intersection of art and technology.

Ben Eaton is technical director and co-founder of Invisible Flock studio. Invisible flock work at the intersections of art and technology, using creative methodologies and interventions to offer new perspectives and practical solutions currently mostly in health and conservation spaces.

Victoria Pratt is Creative director and co-founder of Invisible Flock studio. Invisible flock work at the intersections of art and technology, using creative methodologies and interventions to offer new perspectives and practical solutions currently mostly in health and conservation spaces.

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

February 18 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!