January 2023: Mastering Collaboration, with Gretchen Anderson

We’re thrilled that past Fluxible speaker Gretchen Anderson is joining us for our first session of 2023.

In Mastering Collaboration, Gretchen outlines how collaboration works, what gets in the way, and how you can adapt your team’s practices to make working together more fun, and more productive. In this session, Gretchen will lay out some of the basics of working together better and will give some specific suggestions for teams. Then there will be a healthy amount of time for attendees to ask specific questions and share what’s challenging and what works. So get your questions ready and join us!

Please register for this free event

January 19, 2023
12:00pm ET
Live streamed to wherever you are!

January 2018: Designing Interfaces that Compel and Motivate

January’s uxWaterloo event will be held at the Games Institute at University of Waterloo and involves both a talk and demos you can try. Feel free to join for either or both.

In the absence of performance or usability benefits, what compels people to interact with technology such as the red dot on our smartphone email app, the number of likes on our latest post, or the “just one more turn” button in our favourite video game? There are many lessons from psychology that we can learn about basic human needs, and what ultimately motivates interaction.

In this talk, Mark Hancock will give an overview of the basic human needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. He will discuss the idea that the success of novel technology is due largely to its ability to satisfy these basic human needs, and he will relate this concept to his lab’s research on virtual and augmented reality, 3D interaction on multi-touch tables, and applications in therapy, education, and gaming. You’ll also have the chance to try out some of the novel technology he’ll talk about, including a way of enhancing virtual reality experiences with the haptic experience of physical objects.

About the speaker

Mark Hancock is an associate professor in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo, and Associate Director of the Games Institute. He is also a General Chair for this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018). His research includes the design and development of interfaces and interaction techniques for mixed reality, multi-touch digital surfaces, and games, with a focus on physical-like 3D interaction.

Parking at University of Waterloo

Parking will be provided for free. You will need to get a scratch ticket to put in your car from a volunteer at the front door of the Games Institute (map).

Please register for this free event

Wednesday January 24, 2018
Talk from 5:30 to 6:30pm
Demos from 6:30 to 7:30pm
The Games Institute, University of Waterloo
175 Columbia St West, Waterloo, Ontario

December 2017: Sense and Respond, with Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden

We have a special remote presentation today from past Fluxible speakers Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden who will be joining us from Brooklyn NY and somewhere in Spain, respectively.

We are in the midst of a revolution.

Technology is no longer just an IT problem. The rhythm of technology is changing the rhythm of business, and businesses need to adapt. To thrive, businesses must become ‘sensing organizations,’ able to sense and respond to changing customer and employee behaviours.

In their new book Sense and Respond, past Fluxible speakers Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden explain how to build truly sensing organizations, using illuminating stories from organisations including Paypal, Zara, AutoTrader, and UK Government’s Digital Service.

Their new book tells us more about how to sense and respond effectively. This requires shifting from managing outputs to what the authors call ‘outcome focused management,’ which includes: – Framing work, not as a set of features to deliver, but as customer behaviors and outcomes that can be amplified, encouraged and changed

• Forming self-guided teams that can read and react to a fast-changing environment
• Creating a ‘learning-all-the-time’ culture that can understand and respond to new customer behaviors and the data they generate
• Developing the new universal skills of customer listening, assessment and response in everyone at the organization

Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, describes Josh and Jeff’s work as providing “a crucial framework for the modern world of business.” For those looking to engage in a two-way conversation with the market and their customers, and to drive value from that conversation, please join us to learn more.

Note that this event is being presented at a special time and starts at 12:00 noon sharp! Note as well that we’re presenting Jeff and Josh in collaboration with Lean Product Waterloo.

Please register for this free event

Thursday December 14, 2017
12:00 noon to 1:15pm
3rd Floor Theatre, Roddenberry, Communitech
151 Charles Street West
Kitchener, Ontario

August 2016: Informal Pub Meetup, Part 2

Now available in a special August Edition! Complete with this repeated text form our delightful July Edition:

In what is now a beloved summer tradition, it’s time to replace energizing presentations and deep UX thoughts with a lighter event befitting the season. Let’s savour that summer feeling with a July an August uxWaterloo session that features informal talk, some of it even UX-related, and drinks. As befits any self-respecting tradition, we do this every July and August and the laid-back atmosphere and conversations are a welcome addition to any summer schedule. Join us!

And, as has become a yearly tradition, count on hearing from Bob and Mark with an an update on Fluxible 2016, Canada’s UX Festival! You’ve been warned…

Please register for this free event

Thursday August 18, 2016
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Abe Erb Brewing
15 King Street South, Uptown Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario

Announcing the September UX Book Club event and a new UX Book Club Meetup group

UX Book Club KW has run for its inaugural year under the uxWaterloo umbrella, but now it’s time for us to spread our wings and branch out on our own. Read below for information about our next Book Club event and how to sign up for our new meetup group at meetup.com/UX-Book-Club-KW. Many thanks to Bob and Mark at uxWaterloo for supporting us over our first year!

With a lot of summer reading time still to go, why not settle into your beach chair or hammock with our September UX Book Club pick. At our next meeting, we’ll be discussing Abby Covert’s recent book, How To Make Sense Of Any Mess, a book about, “information architecture for everybody”.

We all face messes or situations where the interactions between people and information are confusing or full of difficulties. Who doesn’t bump up against messes of information and people every day? Especially in a world that’s getting more complex, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information we encounter. This book provides a seven step process for making sense of any mess. Each chapter contains a set of lessons as well as workbook exercises architected to help you to work through your own mess.

Many of you have commented how you’ve enjoyed having the author join us. We completely agree and are thrilled to say that Abby will be joining us live and in person.

Finally, from now on we’ll be using Meetup.com to manage book club. Join us there now!

Please register at meetup.com/UX-Book-Club-KW for this free event as spaces are limited.

Wednesday September 23rd, 2015
7:00 to 8:30 pm
Location: TBD

If you can’t make it out to UX Book Club (and even if you can!), be sure to catch Abby at Fluxible 2015, September 26-27th. Her talk, Time as Material, explores time and how — perhaps more than any other force — it determines if we will succeed or if we will fail.

And if you want to hear more about UX Book Club events, please join our Meetup group (meetup.com/UX-Book-Club-KW) as a member. New events will be announced through the meetup group in the future.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Katie and Davis