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!

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]

November 2019: UX Community Shorts

uxWaterloo is excited to bring you another UX Community Shorts session, where 6 local UXers will share their experiences and learnings from the field. Topics will range from research sprint, design for educators, remote teams, freelancing, the philosophy of UX, and more. It’ll be a great night with a wide range of ideas.

Join us and hear from:

Kimberly Tee and Julia Thompson: Research Sprints
Caleb Williams: Design for Educators
James Carmichael: The Importance of Flexibility
Deanna Ritchie: Communicating through packets: How one UX designer works with her remote dev team
Corey Sawkins: The philosophy of causality and UX

Please register for this free event

Thursday November 21st, 2019
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, 3rd Floor, Roddenberry
[View on Google Maps]

StartupWeekend KW looking for UX mentors

Startup Weekend returns to KW on September 20-22, 2013 at the Communitech Hub. If you missed it last year, here’s your chance to get involved with a fun weekend-long, hands-on experience in which new startup ideas take form and come to life.

Communitech is looking for some UXers to participate as mentors during the event. Lend your expertise to the participating teams, make new friends and connections, and help create something awesome. Mentoring doesn’t necessarily require a commitment of the entire weekend. For more information or to express your interest, please email KW (at) startupweekend (dot) org.

About Startup Weekend

Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. It is the largest community of passionate entrepreneurs with over 400 past events in 100 countries around the world in 2011.

The non-profit organization is headquartered in Seattle, Washington but Startup Weekend organizers and facilitators can be found in over 200 cities around the world. From Mongolia to South Africa to London to Brazil, people around the globe are coming together for weekend-long workshops to pitch ideas, form teams, and start companies.

All Startup Weekend events follow the same basic model: anyone is welcome to pitch their startup idea and receive feedback from their peers. Teams organically form around the top ideas (as determined by popular vote) and then it’s a 54 hour frenzy of business model creation, coding, designing, and market validation. The weekends culminate with presentations in front of local entrepreneurial leaders with another opportunity for critical feedback.

Whether entrepreneurs found companies, find a cofounder, meet someone new, or learn a skill far outside their usual 9-to-5, everyone is guaranteed to leave the event better prepared to navigate the chaotic but fun world of startups. If you want to put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur, register now for the best weekend of your life!

September 2013: Making a career in UX

A career that focuses on user experience in creating products or services is one that is engaging, enlightening, and rewarding. It’s one that many people are attracted to, and yet, as a still-young field, it isn’t always clear what the best career path is, either when starting out or when trying to grow mid-career.

We’re here to help!

In this session we’ll have a group discussion on UX careers, led by a pair of people whose deep knowledge will benefit anyone interested in a career in UX.

Kate Wilhelm has been owning her development as a user experience practitioner since she became the first Information Architect at BlackBerry seven years ago. She creates opportunities to learn and grow through whatever scrappy means she can devise, both on the job and off, and finds ways to bring others along for the ride. At BlackBerry, Kate works on making it easier for developers to create apps for BlackBerry. She also works on bringing a user focus to projects and on building awareness and capacity for UX in her company and community. Kate is delivering a career-related workshop at Fluxible (September 14&15), Starting Out or Bulking Up: UX Circuit Training for Any Fitness Level.

Kristina McDougall has spent more than 15 years working with local software companies, delivering recruiting solutions, and also working directly as a software sales rep and consultant. Kristina leads recruitment and executive search for The Laudi Group, managing critical senior level searches for high-growth tech clients. It is her goal and passion to help the leaders of Canada’s tech sector, by connecting them with the talented individuals who will drive their success.

Bring your questions and your own experiences to this session, and together we’ll discover ways to illuminate your UX career path.

Register for the uxWaterloo September meeting. Hope to see you there!

Where and when

Thursday September 12, 2013
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, P2P Room
151 Charles St. W.
Kitchener, ON N2G 1H6

January 2013: Designing the restaurant experience

This month, we stretch our skills (and tease our taste buds) by getting an inside look at the role of design in the restaurant business. Many of the principles behind designing great experiences are universal, so there’s lots to learn by exchanging ideas with our compatriots in industries outside our normal fields of interest.

And as far as fields of interest go, it’s tough to knock great food & drink!

Jody Palubiski (Managing Partner) and Cindy Perri (Brand Guardian) of the Charcoal Group are hosting us at the newly-opened Beertown in Waterloo Town Square. Jody and Cindy will describe the goals, considerations, and challenges involved in designing the restaurant experience. They’ll cover ground such as the physical space, menus, logos and visuals, and more. Much of our time together will be open Q&A, so it’s a great chance to learn something new and to draw connections with your own design practice — regardless of the medium in which you work.

Come prepared to buy your own drink during this event, and there’s a strong chance you’ll find a nice selection of foods to accompany it…

Attendance is limited, so please register for this event!

Wednesday January 23, 2013
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Beertown Restaurant
(ask for UX Waterloo when you arrive)
Waterloo Town Square
75 King St. South
Waterloo, Ontario

(November 2011) An Evening of Serious Play at the New FELT Lab

Our November event is an exciting opportunity to get some hands-on play time with a variety of interactive technologies in the recently launched FELT lab, located in St. Jacobs. uxWaterloo is one of the very first groups to make use of this terrific new facility!

A digital sandbox for serious play

Founded by the University of Waterloo’s Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP), the FELT lab is designed to spark “research entrepreneurship” between UW students, faculty and industry experts. It focuses particularly on interactivity and responsiveness in digital display environments, and has numerous corporate partners who’ve brought some terrific toys to the table.

The lab is located in the offices of Quarry Integrated Communications, but has a separate entrance off King Street in St. Jacobs. Inside the lab, you’ll find a range of emerging technologies such as Christie Canada’s MicroTiles, GestureTek’s Cube and Kiosk, Float4’s interactive FX, and Kommerz’s Mixed Reality Interface (MRI).

And we’re going to have some serious fun!

uxWaterloo’s event will feature some hands-on creative, integrative thinking, and building. Guided by students from the REAP program, we’ll work in groups to brainstorm (and bodystorm!) unique combinations and innovative applications of the lab’s technologies. We’ll pitch our best ideas to each other while learning about all the lab’s capabilities and technologies in the process. And, we’ll be documenting the process and ideas on video, ensuring that our creative energy is captured for posterity.

Play! Create! Share! Learn! It’s going to be an awesome event!

Thursday November 24, 2011
5:30 to 7:00 pm
FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map]
Sign up now, as space is limited!