IxDA

As president of the UW IxDA chapter, I just hosted our second Product Designer Ask Me Anything event with my terrific board. The event was quite the success! I invited 8 product design panelists to our IxD studio space to inspire and give advice to students about working in the field. It was incredible to see that 60 students came and there was no leftover pagliacci's pizza. Thanks again Jay Ma (Visa) , Erfan Dastournejad (Starbucks), Ryan Stephen (Microsoft) , Cobi Stancik (ProtoPie), Bridgette Chen (Axios) , Chandler Simon (Breville | Sage) , Tressa Coultard (Oracle), and James Pierce (UW Division of Design, School of Art + Art History + Design) for coming. Everyone in the room felt so informed by all of the terrific answers. As for future events, IxDA has plenty up its sleeve. So if you are a UW Design student, keep an eye out in the design hallway for posters next quarter! Thanks again Lia Chon, Dasha Orlov, Lily-Rose Day, Lee Hardisty, and Fiona Willmer for helping to bring this event together!

It was so hard to think about what to share today. What to emphasise. Especially hard the day after an amazing IxDA London event last night that had me in tears as we focused on vulnerable stories over cool stuff. For this week's Friday Thanks, I'd love to thank: Kardo Ayoub for having the bravery to share such a funny, fascinating, bittersweet and moving story so publicly last night at IxDA London. I feel so privileged you approached us for your public speaking debut. We'll all remember it and you. Victoria Kirk for having the bravery and openness to share a talk-in-progress at the event and receive feedback with grace. Elizabeth Buie, PhD FRSA for a wide-ranging talk about design for older adults including language, challenging common narratives, age-related sound tests and so much more. All the great attendees that came to support and say hello. Cat Walther for helping me out of a real fix. And for all the tough stuff you've been beavering away on. Benno L?wenberg for the valuable book structure jam. Super useful and I think we're onto something good ;-) Eva-Lotta Lamm for the wonderful support and challenges around the book. Really appreciate the openness in some areas, and the firm clarity in others. Julie Kim for a further two waves of incredible photographs from last week's session. It gave me such joy to see me in so many different lights, and the guests captured at their best. Cameron Sinclair FRSA for entertaining my weird fan-boy intrusion after the event on Tuesday morning. Your Helsinki Interaction talk still stands as one of the best talks I have ever experienced. Knut Graf and Ryan Rumsey for the Troika Inception jamming. Be Kaler Pilgrim for coming along to IxDA London on a very tough day. Always good to see you in person. A deeply sad day for it, but a great way for us to re-connect. Paolo Rizzi and ustwo for the great space again. Clare Mroz for helping with Buddy. It's really helping with reducing some stresses when I have to escape to an appointment. Abbie Carter for being so tolerant with Buddy trying to pull down at your top. Amale Ghalbouni for hosting a deep and playful Lego Serious Play Coaching session with some great folks. So valuable getting into building again and exploring the stresses of this time of year. Stephen Lawton for the first in-person conversation for so so long. Really appreciated you updating me on life events, design & product thinking, neuro-diversity and exciting challenges. Alyce Burton for saying hello on Tuesday and satisfying my curiosity of your Creative Scientist title. Michael Johnston for probing more of my background and mindset today, and for coming along last night. Emma Caselton for the lovely 1:1 - so not enough time to explore all the things, but it stirred so much thinking, especially around the prospect of coaching support for students. Dr Michelle Ulor for the curiosity around me, my background, UX and for opening the door for many more lovely conversations.

After over 12 years running IxDA London with Boon Yew Chew and our amazing volunteers, we have generally curated speakers and sessions based on who and what we felt was most interesting. It's biased, skewed, limiting, but also one of the reasons we believe we've delivered some of the best content I have experienced at meetup events. Only very occasionally, does someone approach us and say they'd like to talk about something. Maybe we have set an intimidating bar in the past? And if they do, it often sounds a bit samey, or that they just want to talk about something for their company or their agenda. I think that's fine for some events. But not IxDA London. And then something magical happened a few weeks back" Firstly, I had the wonderful Elizabeth Buie, PhD FRSA (a peer I hadn't spoken to for 12+ years) get in touch wanting to share something valuable to us all. And then a couple of days later, Kardo Ayoub — someone I had heard amazing things about over the years — approaches you with the most beautiful, and powerful story, you know something special is going to happen. And then the next week, my friend and GROUP OF HUMANS?, Victoria Kirk, talked about another personal story-driven talk she is working on in one of our Human Futures calls. Having been trying to arrange a workshop around cultural diversity for ages, I thought a practice of her upcoming TedX talk would be a great addition and tease for next year ;-) So, we have three great speakers tomorrow night at ustwo London, exploring aspects of aging, disability, cultural diversity and inclusion from some deeply personal perspectives that have compelled the desire to help others. It will be informative, useful, moving and valuable as always. But do bring some tissues or a hankie, because there could be tears. I am going to close ticket sales soon, as we'd rather keep it as intimate as possible and don't want too many people seeing me cry in public. Last few left at: https://lnkd.in/eAQ78k9j Huge thanks to our long-term sponsors Futureheads Recruitment | B Corp?, ustwo, and Priya Prakash for helping get this date and venue in the diary ages ago.

Join us on November 10, 2024, for an exciting design talk organized by One Design Community—where AI & UX meet Design. Don’t miss this chance to learn from industry leaders: ??? Speakers Alok Nandi – Designer, author, and educator Rajib Ghosh – Designer, innovator, and entrepreneur in conversation with Rahul Bhattacharya ?? Seats are limited, so register now to secure your spot! Link below. Venue details coming soon. Register: https://lnkd.in/gqAx8TAS #OneDesignCommunity #DesignTalk #KolkataDesign #UXandAI #UserExperienceDesign