About us

Goals of the group

This group is a professional interest community for anyone concerned about improving the “user experience” of products and services. User experience (or UX) is a somewhat vague term, but we’ve chosen it deliberately because it speaks to the broad range of people and professions who are involved. In a nutshell, UX is the practice of designing products that delight the people who will ultimately use them. Delighting customers is good business, so companies around the world are taking a serious look at how this kind of thinking contributes to their success.

The group has two main goals:

• To provide a support community for practicing designers, whether they identify themselves as interaction designers, industrial designers, web designers, etc. We’re casting a wide net here, as we believe there’s a lot of value to be had in bringing together a variety of design disciplines.
• To promote the value that Design (note the capital D) and “design thinking” brings to business. This means we’ll strive to have active members from disciplines other than design, such as business strategy, marketing, product management, and so on.

If either of these goals interests you, you’re welcome to join us.

When do we meet?

We typically meet on the third Thursday of each month, from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm. Thanks to our affiliation with Communitech, our meetings are held in the Accelerator Centre at:

295 Hagey Blvd.
Waterloo, Ontario
N2L 6R5

Note that times and locations may sometimes need to change due to scheduling conflicts. So please check this website to confirm before heading out to our events.

About our affiliations

We’re affiliated with two organizations:

• The Interaction Design Association (IxDA). We’re recognized as a local “face-to-face” group of the IxDA. IxDA is a non-profit professional organization whose focus is promoting both the field of interaction design and the interests of an international community of practitioners, managers, educators, and students of interaction design. Our affiliation with IxDA plugs us into a valuable network of peers and experts while allowing us to build and operate our local group as we see fit. IxDA hosts a very active discussion list that’s well worth checking out.
• Communitech. We’re sponsored by Communitech as a “peer-to-peer” group. Communitech is an industry-led organization driving the growth and success of Waterloo Region’s technology sector through leadership, connections and promotion. Its 450+ members include big names such as Research In Motion, Open Text and COM DEV, but equally important are the myriad of local start-up enterprises and growing firms. As a peer-to-peer group, we benefit from Communitech’s help in organizing events and plugging us into Waterloo’s active business and technology community.

Contacts

Please direct questions or suggestions to the group’s coordinators, Robert Barlow-Busch and Navid Sadikali. Click here to fire a message to their Gmail account for the UX group.