Past Events

In this inspiring talk, Cyd Harrell will discuss how UX practitioners can partner with public servants to shape institutional experiences that honor people’s time and human dignity. She will share frameworks from her book and talk about the best ways to foster trust with public sector partners new to UX, as well as sharing stories of frustration and success from her years designing with governments. She'll invite all practitioners to make service a part of their career, and show how to realize that goal.

Cyd Harrell is well known in industry and government for her creative approach to user research and service design. Since 2012, working with the Center for Civic Design, Code for America, and 18F, as well as independently, Cyd has helped multiple executive- and judicial-branch agencies in the US apply research techniques and user-centered practice to serving the public. Her new book, A Civic Technologist's Practice Guide, is an onboarding guide and survival manual for tech people joining public sector work. When not at the office helping public servants use design for good, Cyd is a mentor for mid-senior UX practitioners. Her favorite tools are metaphor and (metaphorical) duct tape.

With the effects of racial and social injustices and a looming pandemic, we are experiencing a time of uncertainty where we finally recognize something that has been missing. We are hosting Navigating Design Careers to focus on people who we have overlooked for far too long. This 3-part series of events is for professionals who want to shift careers and students who have not been allowed to consider design for their future.

Join us for our upcoming event on Friday, November 20, 2020!

Session 3: UX Design Careers: Networking and Roundtable Discussions - November 20 @ 12 pm - 1 pm ET

During our final session of Navigating Design Careers, attendees will have the opportunity to join a virtual breakout room to discuss a specific career path with established professionals in different disciplines or aspects of working in UX.

This is your chance to dig deeper into things like how someone transitioned into their desired field; how to gain or deepen skills in a certain craft; books, meetups, conferences, and other resources that have helped; tips for crafting your resume and portfolio; and much, much more.

Pick from 1 of 4 tickets:

- Product/In-House Designer Roundtable

- Agency/Design Consultant Roundtable

- Content Design Roundtable

- User Research Roundtable

Richmond Design Group Code of Conduct

This installment will be a panel discussion with students enrolled at Reynolds Community College. We'll explore what different disciplines exist in UX and how different people have navigated their journey as designers.

Sunny Stueve - Senior UX Architect

Sunny Stueve is a Senior User Experience Architect in Washington, DC. For the last several years, she has focused on incorporating human-centered methodologies, intuitive design, and research into the agile processes of complex, large-scale, enterprise applications in support of National Security missions. She’s currently leading a UX team in support of the US Customs & Immigration Services. Sunny is a user advocate, a UX evangelist, a minimalist designer, an empathetic listener, and a lifelong learner.

Jabali Williams - Director of User Experience

As Director of User Experience, Jabali’s impact spans both clients and disciplines. From working on multiple award-winning website redesigns to leading the growth of the user experience discipline—to include both content strategy and UX/UI design—Jabali walks the line between hands-on support and strategic oversight.

Jabali can be found regularly at local UX events and has spoken at several meetups, conferences, and institutes of higher education including: GoodGovUX, UXPA, and the University of Maryland.

Join us at Ardent to celebrate this new merger. Featuring good beer and food, discussion of design hot topics, and networking.

WIAD is a one-day, global festival of all things Information Architecture, UX, Interaction Design, Design Strategy, User Research and related disciplines. Host cities around the world all have events on the same day. Events are open to and welcoming of anyone interested in learning how design can change the world

This year's theme is: Design for Difference.

"As designers, we are responsible for creating worlds of experiences, environments, services, and systems that impact millions of people – with lasting impacts. While we don’t have a Hippocratic Oath, it’s important for us to follow a similar goal to “do good” and “do not harm.” It is our responsibility as IA's to consider the consequences and impact our design decisions have on humanity and society as a whole.

Research is a foundational step in the design process. It ensures that we understand and account for diverse user needs within communities, both in our own domains and globally."

Here are this month’s speakers:

Terry Peters, Experience Director, ICF Olson

Talk:

Communicating Design

Design is a complex process composed of many smaller activities: listening, analyzing, evaluating, brainstorming, synthesizing, experimenting, composing, describing, discussing, exploring, reacting, and countless others. Documenting is not one of these activities, but engaging in any of these activities yields artifacts—diagrams, notes, sketches, lists, inventories, annotations, and larger documents—that result from the act of performing the task. At the same time, each task requires inputs, and these artifacts that come from doing design are the same things that can help feed the design process. The success of the task directly relates to the quality of the inputs and may be measured on the quality of its outputs. So how does one effectively make use of these to communicate the fruits of their labors?

Bio:

Terry is a talented user experience leader with 12 years of proven experience in the development and implementation of enterprise digital strategies, user-centered research and systems design with clients such as AARP, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Chik-fil-A, Johnson Controls, Scripps Networks, and The Nature Conservancy. Experienced team leader capable of mentoring cross-functional teams and fostering relationships to transform business and design needs into valuable and usable working products.

Katie Moriarty, UX Researcher, Snag

Talk:

You Don’t Have to Be a Researcher to Do User Research

We’ll discuss the value of observational research, how to do this type of research yourself, and how to apply your learnings to your day-to-day practice. Katie will use her own experiences to illustrate how accessible observational research can be.

Bio:

Katie is a User Experience Researcher at Snag. Her work focuses on helping Snag’s product development teams gain a greater understanding of hourly workers and employers so they can design and build products that solve their users true pain points. Katie has experience in conducting a wide range of qualitative research methods to uncover key insights that are both meaningful and actionable to stakeholders.

Connect:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiemoriarty/

Adarsh Ramakrishnan, Freelance Product Consultant

Talk:

A Figma(nt) of Your Imagination -- Streamlining your design flow using Figma

Explore how Figma can help you consolidate your entire design flow, letting you design, prototype, and spec in one platform.

Bio:

Adarsh is a product consultant who specializes in strategy and design. As part of his consulting services, he has designed and built visual systems for digital products across multiple platforms. He is also teaches engineering design to students from non-technical majors through the VCU Da Vinci Center.

Matt McGhan, Experience Designer, SingleStone

Talk:

Healthy Design Systems Make Better Products

Bio:

Midwest farm boy turned East Coast experience designer. Went from drawing animals, sports cards, and airplanes to designing visual experiences via VCU to non-profit to SingleStone. Lover of people and their day-to-day interactions with designed & digital things.

4 Richmond designers will drop their know-how, lessons learned, and best practices on a variety of topics in just 15 minutes apiece. Not only will you walk away inspired—you’ll be armed with new tools and techniques you can put into practice ASAP.

Presenters:

Ashley Cook - Making UX Better

"User Research" Coming Together: Big R Meets Little R

Adarsh Ramakrishnan - Capital One

Project Management as Process

Larry Thacker - CarMax

SPRINT Types and Planning

Amanda Serfozo - Capital One

Kicking Off a Project the Right Way

About Raj

"I’m an AI content designer and strategist at Capital One. I design content primarily for our company’s conversational UIs, which include Eno, our SMS chatbot, and our Alexa skill on the Amazon Echo. In my free time, I like to watch a lot of sports, television, and movies, and generally be as unhealthy as humanly possible."

About Scott

"I’m an AI content and systems designer at Capital One. Prior to joining the Cap, I worked in the games industry -- primarily in design with some producing and project managing thrown in for good measure. I’ve worked across a wide swath of genres, from kids games like SpongeBob SquarePants and Nancy Drew to slightly-older-kids games like Agatha Christie and the Elder Scrolls series. In my free time I enjoy playing guitar and tinkering with photography. I took a picture of the Washington Monument with my iPhone last weekend that is going to fundamentally change the world, or at least get somewhere near a dozen likes. Could go either way."

At each event, four designers will spend the evening sharing their know-how, lessons learned, and best tips and tricks on a variety of topics. You’ll be armed with new tools and techniques that you can immediately put into practice.

Here’s what’s on deck for our inaugural round of lightning talks!

Presenters:

Kevin Tuskey

Experience Design Lead - SingleStone 

Design Thinking Crash Course

Shannon Leahy

UX Content Designer - Capital One

Topic: 4 Ways to Get Started with Content Testing Today

Jenn Atkins

Product Designer - Snag

Topic: Opportunity Trees: How to grow and care for them

Margaret Karles

Experience Designer - Freelance

Topic: What is a Concept?