For those coming from Kitchener-Waterloo, the buses will be departing from Hagey Hall at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Campus at 8:15 AM to arrive at the University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business for 9:00 AM.‍

Welcome! Upon arriving at the University of Waterloo Stratford Campus, pick up your name tag at the front desk. Breakfast and beverages will be served to kick-off the event.

As Design Professionals, we are told our job is to create products that either solve user problems or take advantage of opportunities. The challenge during these times seems hard to find as new product innovations are being released every day. Are we running out of problems or opportunities? No, we have simply been only looking at the problem/opportunity from our usual viewpoint of the average user. What if we looked at it from a different lens? What if we look at people who always struggle with problems based on their environments not accommodating their unique needs?

David argues that this is the gold mine of opportunity for creating innovative products. Solving for the mismatches of people with disabilities will lead into innovations for your users and customers of all abilities! We will discuss real-world examples of this, how to do it, and future market demand. We will all be disabled one day; some of us just beat you to it.

‍David Dame (he/him)
‍Director of Accessibility, Microsoft

A human-centred look at the steps taken to improve the overall designer experience at Sun Life, and the impact it’s had on both people and product. This session will focus on the personal stories of challenges team members faced working at an organization that was still learning the value of design.  Using 3-4 key examples, the team will highlight the challenges they faced establishing design at Sun Life, and how they’ve worked to address them while building an inclusive, supportive design practice.
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‍Rob Williams (he/him)
‍AVP, User Experience, Sun Life
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‍Deepika Malik (she/her)
AVP Enterprise Design Coach, Sun Life
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‍Karri Ojanen (he/him)
Director/Design Coach, Sun Life

#1: Best Practices for Human AI Interaction Design (Room 2024)

‍Everton Lewis discusses the challenges for creating positive Human AI interactions. During this session, he will share some of the research-based tools he uses to design better experiences with algorithms. Workshop attendees will experiment with and gain experience using different tools during the session.

Everton Lewis (he/him)
CEO, Impact Signal
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#2: Design Beyond Borders: Building a Global Design System (Room 2129)

Establishing and implementing a design system is hard work. But what about when you need to design one that meets the needs of designers in over 7 countries and regions? How do you account for cultural differences and region-specific design trends while still creating something that’s usable for everyone at a global organization? How do you ensure everyone is empowered to contribute and feels like their voice is heard?

Sun Life’s Canadian and Global Design Operations teams will take you through the process of how we came together to build our Helios design system. Workshop attendees will learn how we navigated challenges collaborating across regions, languages, and borders, and leave with tips and tricks you can use to build or refine your own organization’s design system.

Sarah Rath (she/her)
Senior UX Lead, Helios Design System, Sun Life
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Craig Moore
Canada Design Op Director, Sun Life
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Daniel Chan
Global Design Op Director, Sun Life
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Jessica Matson
Design Operations Lead, Sun Life

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#3: Beyond the business case for diversity: Why do diversity initiatives in creative industries go wrong, and how can we make things right?  (Room 2022)

We've all heard it said: diversity is good for business! Diverse teams facilitate higher rates of innovation, and having more women in senior leadership positions leads to higher profits.  But there is a downside to justifying diversity initiatives solely on the basis of the business case.
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In this workshop, we will explore those downsides as they apply to creative industries. Kim de Laat, Assistant Professor of Human and Organization Behaviour at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, will present findings from her research on diversity discourse and racism in the Canadian music industry, and introduce some policy interventions for moving from diversity to inclusion in creative fields.

Kim de Laat (she/her)
Professor of Organization and Human Behaviour, University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business

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#4: Business Model Innovation, a Reversed Approach (Room 3129)
Are you looking for a practical and fun approach to business model innovation? Join Dr. Will Zhao for a talk on a simple, hands-on, and easy-to-implement technique that helped organizations generate novel ideas by systematically challenging the fundamental assumptions underlying their industries.

During this engaging talk, you will:
- Discover (while having a great laugh) this powerful approach and its applications in various industries;
- Understand the step-by-step, easy-to-follow process to identify, reverse, and generate innovative ideas for business model transformation;
- Learn from real-life examples of how this technique has led to groundbreaking solutions and business model reinvention;
- Gain practical insights on assessing the feasibility, relevance, and potential impact of new ideas generated from the exercise;
- Determine how to refine and implement the most promising ideas for maximum impact in a competitive market.
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Will Zhao (he/him)
Professor, University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business

Your brain needs energy, eat some food! Enjoy a catered lunch.

Over the past few years, the design community has had few places to discuss and debate the important topics in our practice and the industry. Conversations about Design on Social Media have often been unconstructive, and one-sided with only the loudest voices represented. Safe, open spaces for discussion are important. They help us understand, question and critique what is and consider what might be. The game Freestyle Socials is designed to help people have better disagreements about polarized topics based on academic research and public consultation. For experienced practitioners, it’s a reminder to consider new perspectives, alternative viewpoints and challenge orthodoxy. For students, these conversations will help you learn to let go of old ways of thinking and challenge you to question your opinions and show you that you can also contribute valuable perspectives to the discussion. Most importantly, it's a chance to remember how to play and have fun with the work we love.

Anthony Morgan (he/him)
TV Host, PHD Researcher, Entrepreneur

#1: Designing Beyond Screens: Service Design Blueprinting (Room 2024)

Are you looking to expand your application of design beyond digital-only experiences? Join this workshop to learn how to take a more holistic approach to design by considering the entire end-to-end user experience, including offline touchpoints and interactions. In this workshop, we’ll cover: - What Service Design is and how it fits into the UX world- What is a service blueprint, and how can it help me create better experiences- Creating a service blueprint to identify pain points to solve and opportunities to exploreBy the end of the workshop, you will have a basic understanding of service blueprints and how they can help you in your work, as well as some tools for thinking like a Service Designer in your next project.

Emily Hutnik (she/her)
Sr. Service Designer, Tangerine
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#2: Knowing Where it Hurts: Using Research and Measurement to Evolve Advisor Digital Tools at Sun Life (Room 2129)

Advisors are a user group within Sun Life Financial that have not always gotten the same focus as client users. This session will first explore the evolution of research support for advisor-facing digital tools. Discussion will then move to how we plan to use research and measurement, including surveys, to evolve digital tools at Sun Life. Breakout discussion groups will cover topics related to survey options and practices.

Kristina Miller
Senior Journey Design Researcher, Sun Life
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‍Dana Gougeon
Senior User Experience Research Lead, Sun Life
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#3: Creating a VR Experience Using Unity (Room 2022)

Learn how to create XR experiences on the web through browsers. This workshop will be entry level, but will show more accessible pathways for people to learn and create VR experiences. This is a highly interactive talk for all to break boundaries and learn a new medium.
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‍Seyitan Oke (he/him)
Sr. Product Designer, Unity TechnologiesUniversity of Waterloo, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business Alum

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#4: Snakes & Ladders: How to Know if You’re Moving Forward (Room 3129)

‍Creating sweeping organizational-wide change is why many people choose to work in the world of experience design. However, creating change – seeing the impact of the user insights you generated, building future state journey maps that get implemented, creating prototypes and scaling solutions– it all takes time. Quite often, it can feel like a game of Snakes & Ladders: a few steps forward and many steps back. In this workshop, participants will co-create an artifact that helps them self-assess whether they are setting themselves up for impact. Taylor Kim will share the tools she’s learned from her experiences working as a designer at Mackenzie Investments and Shopify. Participants will leave the workshop with a practical tool that can help them navigate their careers.
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‍Taylor Kim (she/her)
‍Senior Researcher, Shopify

Chris Wilson (he/him)
Social Architect, Master of Design Candidate in Strategic Foresight and InnovationUniversity of Waterloo alum

Jeff Towers (he/him)
Innovation and Design Manager, Medavie
University of Waterloo, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business Alum
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Katherine Alexander (she/her)
Digital Marketing Specialist
University of Waterloo, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business Alum
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Katrina Schouten (they/them)
Qualitative Design Research Consultant, Innovation Strategist, Artist
University of Waterloo, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business Alum
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‍Moderated by
‍Markus Grupp (he/him)
BLEND Host

Many people have the mistaken notion that people choose a profession, focus their education on it, and then work in it for the rest of their careers. Most leaders in design and research have taken a more circuitous route, learning valuable things on the way, and often pivoting their career trajectory significantly with great results.

Karel will share his own career journey as well as those of several others. After outlining the benefits of a circuitous career path as well as its pitfalls, he will provide recommendations for both educational institutions and individuals to incorporate circuitousness into their curricula and career path, respectively.
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Karel Vredenburg (he/him)
Global Vice President of Client Insights and Research, IBM

Connect and socialize with speakers, sponsors and attendees over light snacks and refreshments!

Bus departs the University of Waterloo Stratford School to return to the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Campus at Hagey Hall. Buses expected to arrive at approximately 6:45 PM at Waterloo campus.