On April 24th, PhillyCHI will host our Designed to Connect event where you will spark new connections with members in the design world! Within this speed networking event, we will provide you with a great opportunity to engage with new people in fun lightning rounds. Don't miss this event - it's an way to learn from other designers in a variety of industries!

We’re kicking of a new year with former PhillyCHI board member Upma Singh’s presentation: Introduction to OOUX (Object Oriented UX). Come learn about OOUX with a Q&A and learn about the spring events we have planned! Event is free but attendance is limited — register below for the Zoom link.

Note: This event is free, but registration is very limited due to the highly interactive nature of the workshop.

Registrants must be able to attend IN-PERSON at Indy Hall and attend for the entirety of the workshop. You will also be asked to write a short (1-2 sentence) description of why you’re interested in attending this workshop.

Join us at Indy Hall for an exciting event where you can unleash your creativity and design your alter ego!

About Meg: Meg created The Alter Ego Project based on her own need to live more authentically. "I am a seeker, learner, creative, and teacher. I combine skills developed over my tech and education careers with independent research I have conducted on alter egos. I thrive on partnering with other curious souls through this delightful, fun process of self-discovery."

About the Workshop: During this in-person event, you'll have the opportunity to design and tap into your alter ego to work through any personal or professional challenges you may be facing.

Whether you are challenged with saying "no" more often, speaking up and being candid at work, or just want to present a more confident version of yourself, be prepared to creatively problem solve and have some fun! While this workshop is geared towards UX professionals, it's open to all.

Don't miss this chance to step out of your comfort zone and embrace your alter ego!

Join us for an informal happy hour at Cira Green from 5-7pm. We expect good weather, but be prepared for some wind in the evening as it’s on the rooftop. Be on the lookout for the PhillyCHI sign!

No registration required.

With the changing of the leaves, the chill of the air, and the scent of fresh pencils and pumpkin spice, also comes the fall season of events at PhillyCHI!

Learn about our exciting upcoming events, and get to know the Philly UX community with interactive icebreakers on FigJam. We will also have a Job Time for local employers to share open opportunities.

All attendees will be entered to win one of three UX books by Rosenfeld Media!

This is a FREE virtual event, but registration is required to attend.

PhillyCHI is excited to host a virtual event for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) on Thursday, May 18th! There will also be opportunities for networking and group discussions around accessibility.

Oxana Loseva, Sr. UX Researcher at Vanguard, will talk about her efforts including accessibility within the division she works in at Vanguard. She will talk about what efforts and commitments Vanguard has made to accessibility and inclusion and will share her first hand experience working with people with disabilities. She will also share what she's learned working with folks with disabilities. 

We are thrilled to announce our 17th Annual Design Slam! This year’s event will take place on Wednesday, May 10th from 6:30-8:30pm. We are also excited to announce that Design Slam will be returning to Drexel University’s URBN Annex this year!

Each randomly-assigned team will develop a compelling solution to this year’s challenge presented by this year’s nonprofit partner, Mighty Writers, in only one hour. The teams will then pitch their designs to the group, and a panel of judges will select the winning design. Members of the 1st place team will each receive Visa gift cards and a digital certificate!

This is a great opportunity to meet and work side-by-side with designers, strategists, and passionate user experience practitioners from all backgrounds. All backgrounds and levels of expertise are welcome – no specific UX or tech experience is required! Please note that we are not offering spectator seats this year.

Get to know your fellow UX professionals while learning about service design at Love City Brewing on April 20th from 6-8pm!

If you were at our Summer Social at Love City Gardens last year, we will be inside the Taproom this time!

Service design expands beyond UX design by considering the entire end-to-end service experience. It involves designing for interactions between people, processes, and technology. We'll be joined by members from Service Design Philadelphia to share how you can implement service design into your UX practice.

This event is free, but registration is required. Snacks and your first beverage are on us! 🍻

Watch the recording of this event below (and subscribe to our YouTube page!)

Whether you’re applying for your first-ever UX role or an experienced designer looking for your next opportunity, this event is for you! Join us for our first virtual event of the year on Thursday, February 23rd.

We’ll be joined by a panel of experienced hiring managers from top Philly companies who will share their advice on applying and interviewing for a variety of UX roles in 2023. 

Attendees will have the chance to submit questions to the panelists live, network with other UX practitioners attending, and learn about open UX roles in the Philadelphia area.

Panelists

Neha Agarwal
Design Manager, Think Company

Michael D’Ulisse
VP, User Experience Design, Digitas Health

Lauren Muldoon
Manager, UX Strategy, Vanguard

Event Sponsor

Thank you to The Judge Group for sponsoring this event!

The Judge Group is a privately owned, global professional services firm specializing in Technology Consulting, Staffing Solutions and Corporate Training. As a leading services provider, our solutions are successfully delivered through the annual placement of over 8,500 professionals across 30+ locations throughout the United States, Canada and India.

View photos from this event (via PhillyCHI Instagram)

Join us for the first ever UX Super Meetup!

Ladies That UX (LTUX), PhillyCHI, and UX Nights are coming together for a joint meetup to ring in the new year together. This holiday networking event hosted at Dock Street Brewery’s South location is a chance to see familiar faces or meet someone new.

One drink ticket (beer and wine) and snacks are included in the cost to attend.

RSVP today to celebrate 2023 with us!

View photos from the event (via PhillyCHI Instagram)

We are so excited to announce our Annual Holiday Party!

We invite you to join us at Cartesian Brewing on December 14th for a night of celebration & networking. Tickets are ~$15 ($10 for early birds – only 20 available!).

Your ticket includes your first drink and some light refreshments. We can't wait to see you!

Date + Time

Wednesday, December 14th, 2022
6:00 - 8:00pm

Location

Cartesian Brewing
1326 E Passyunk Ave., Philadelphia

Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

Annual Sponsors
Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Think Company, Rosenfeld Media, O3 World, and Vanguard.

View photos from the event (via PhillyCHI Instagram)

Since 2005, a day in November has been reserved for celebrating World Usability Day. This is a single day of worldwide events that bring together communities for a common objective: to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use.

This year's WUD theme is “Our Health.”

Based on this year’s theme, we hope to explore systems that provide healthcare in all its many forms such as virtual/telehealth, electronic health records, healthcare products and all digital health related solutions. This theme explores timely and important issues such as continuity of care, access to treatment, telemedicine, systems for mental health, exercise, nutrition and many more. In addition, Our Health includes health problems related to environmental issues such as air and water pollution impact on health.

Read more about World Usability Day.

Featured Talks

Developing Decision Support Features for Cognitive Aids Used During Time-Critical Medical Work: Challenges and Design Opportunities

Angela Mastrianni, PhD Candidate at Drexel University, Human-Computer Interaction. 

At Drexel, Angela is a member of the Interactive Systems for Healthcare (IS4H) lab led by Dr. Aleksandra Sarcevic. Her doctoral research focuses on designing and evaluating clinical decision support systems used by clinicians during pediatric trauma resuscitation. Prior to starting her PhD, Angela worked as a software engineer at an investment bank.

Burnout & its impact on Non-Division I student-athletes

Dhwani Trivedi, Ux Researcher | Ux Designer

Dhwani Trivedi, a learning nerd and currently a UX Design Graduate Student @ Thomas Jefferson University. I reimagine, redesign and build human-centric products, services and experiences.

AI and Health: When User-centered Expertise Makes All the Difference

Josephine Giaimo, Quant/Qual UX Researcher and Leader

Josephine Giaimo started working in the field of data science in the 1980s to eventually become a leader in quantitative and qualitative user experience research. Her original academic research proposed a framework for evaluating the performance of neural networks and statistical approaches in predicting project profits. She is the Founder and Principal of User Experience Research, LLC, providing consulting services to organizations such as AT&T, ADP, Google, Medidata, Sarnoff Corporation, and others. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Montclair State University, and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She is the Treasurer of the Princeton ACM/IEEE Computer Science Society, a member of ACM SIGCHI, and the Membership and Operations Chair of the UXPA NJ chapter.

Schedule

6:30 PM: Welcome & Annoucements

6:45 PM: Presentations

7:45 PM: Raffle + closeout

Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

Event Sponsor: Delve

Unlocking the power of product innovation

We are a multidisciplinary product innovation firm that brings bold ideas to market. For 55 years, we've mobilized the best experts and technologies for our clients. And along the way, we've earned 1,500 patents and 200 design awards.

Annual Sponsors

Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Think Company, Rosenfeld Media, O3 World, Vanguard, and Blue Plate Minds.

Watch the recording of this event:
(via PhillyCHI on YouTube)

The world of design is constantly adapting and shifting to respond to new digital tools and technologies. Join our guest speaker Fredric Vivian Van Freeman to learn about virtual reality. You’ll also get the chance to participate in group discussions around AR/VR, Web 3, AI, and more!

** Please note that this is a virtual event. A link to the Zoom call will be shared with attendees the day of the event.**

Featured Talks

REIMAGINE PATIENT EDUCATION THROUGH VIRTUAL REALITY

As we move closer to the reality of an immersive 3D based internet, many questions will become apparent. How will viewing information and data in a new way change how we interact with technology, and each other? More importantly, what examples do we have of this happening currently? And how can healthcare and the medical technology space lead the way? In this talk he will be presenting current examples of Virtual Reality being used to reimagine patient education, some of the successes and hurdles facing user interaction and user testing with virtual reality, and the role of R&D funding at this current iteration of the technology.

Fredric Vivan Van Freeman
VR/XR Creative Director & Developer / UX Researcher / Artist (MSUX)

Fredric V Freeman currently works with Nemours Children's Hospital of Delaware to serve as Co-PI and Creative Director of Virtual Reality design and development on a pilot clinical trial for a VR educational tool to improve health outcomes for youth with Sickle Cell Disease. Fredric has also helped to design and run virtual reality patient testing workshops, with a focus on technology safety and COVID19 compliance. Currently he is serving as interim faculty of Graphic Design, Web Development, and Virtual Reality at Sam Houston State University as part of the College of Art and Media, CEO of his boutique creative agency, KUZU Creative House. He is also the Co-Founder of the XR Health and Humanities Lab at Sam Houston State University.

Schedule

6:30 PM: Welcome & Annoucements

6:45 PM: Breakout discussion (XR, Web3, AI, or General)

7:05 PM: Presentation - Fredric Vivan Van Freeman

7:50 PM: Q&A

8:00 PM: Raffle + closeout

Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

Annual Sponsors

Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Think Company, Rosenfeld Media, O3 World, Vanguard, and Blue Plate Minds.

Watch the recording of this event:
(via PhillyCHI on YouTube)

PhillyCHI's annual UX Show and Tell will be back on Thursday, September 15th! This is a chance for UXers—whether new to the field or longtime professionals—to share a work-related project or a passion project with the PhillyCHI community. 

** Please note that this is a virtual event. A link to the Zoom call will be shared with attendees the day of the event.**

Featured Talks

CITIZENS - CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE SOUP TO NUTS

Conducting a design thinking session and the work that is created needed before you walk into a room and what has to be done after.

Julie Lazarus, Head of Design Thinking Strategy

Julie Lazarus came to the world of UX in anything but a straight line. She studied Communication Design at Syracuse University and ended up working for national magazines in NYC. InStyle, Brides and the Knot to name a few. Eventually, she ended up in the world of .coms working on brands from Sirus Radio to British Airways asking how does this help our customer? When she did eventually here the term UX, she knew she was already doing it but need the terminology and process experience. So she took an online course and was eventually trained in CX, on the job, which lead her to her current role as head of Design Thinking Strategy at Citizens. Julie works closely with her UX teammates facilitating innovative and customer centric workshops.  

THE MAKING OF NUULY THRIFT

Take a “peek behind the curtain” at Nuuly, an URBN brand dedicated to sustainably-minded experiences and services. Members of their UX Design team will share how they’ve strategically scaled Nuuly’s ecosystem of digital products and the challenges they faced along the way.

Erin Chan, Senior UX Designer

She likes to have fun at work by designing products that are lovable and intuitive, cultivating team culture, and incorporating lots of snack breaks to her day.

Erica Benamy, Principal UX Designer

Erica Benamy is a designer interested in making things that work for people. She enjoys product design, pie making, and petting dogs.

SUPPORTING ADDICTION RECOVERY VIA UX RESEARCH

(Data Can Be Empathetic)

This talk is a case study of how we (Think Company) leveraged a data-driven approach to facilitate deeper connections for those seeking treatment for addictions. The focus is on the intake process, which occurs in a call center environment.

Patrick Lawson, PhD, Principal UX Researcher

Patrick comes from an academic Human Factors & Applied Cognition background, but has primarily practiced as a UX Researcher. He employ a mixed-methods approach to problems, though he specialize in the quantitative side of things. Patrick use research to develop more intuitive, human-centric experiences.

Schedule

6:30 PM: Welcome & Announcements

6:45 PM : Presentations (each presentation will be followed by a short Q&A, time permitting)

8:00 PM: Raffle & Closing

Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

Event Sponsor: Citizens

At Citizens, we're committed to putting our colleagues, communities and shareholders first, because when they succeed, we succeed.

Annual Sponsors

Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Think Company, Rosenfeld Media, O3 World, Vanguard, and Blue Plate Minds.

View photos from this event (via PhillyCHI Instagram)

Join PhillyCHI x Design Brew in welcoming the arrival of summer with an evening of networking with your design peers. 

We’ve reserved The Gardens at Love City, a local Philadelphia brewery in Spring Garden. We will cover the first drink for all attendees - there is also a rotating Food Truck on-site that has snacks or dinner for purchase. This is a great chance to catch up with old friends and meet some new faces in the UX scene.This event is free and open to all PhillyCHI and Design Brew members and friends. 

In Partnership With Design Brew

Date and Time

Date: Wednesday, June 15th, 2022

Time: 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Location: The Gardens at Love City Brewing

Entrance to the Gardens is across the street from Love City, on the corner of 10th and Hamilton

Note: This is an entirely in-person event; we are not offering virtual tickets.

Sponsors

Event Sponsor

This event is sponsored by O3 World 

O3 is a customer experience consultancy. We help bold teams figure out what matters most to their customers. We do this by uncovering data and insights to better understand how to weave solutions into customers’ lives seamlessly and contextually. Our partners count on us to make the complex simple when it comes to integrating technology into all areas of their business to solve existing problems. Everyday we show up to guide brands on their journey to deliver authentic experiences that have a positive impact on people’s lives.

2022 Annual Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Blue Plate Minds, Think Company, Rosenfeld, Vanguard, and Drexel College of Computing & Informatics.

Read Technical.ly’s coverage on this event!

View photos from this event (via PhillyCHI Instagram)

We’re excited to announce that PhillyCHI’s IN PERSON design slam is back for its 16th year! The Annual Design Slam is a collaborative event in user experience design where participants compete in teams to develop the best design solution for a challenge faced by a local nonprofit organization. This is a great opportunity to meet and work side-by-side with designers, strategists, and passionate user experience practitioners from all backgrounds.

Each team, assigned randomly, will develop a compelling solution to this year's challenge presented by our partner (to be announced). Each team will be given some background research on the problem and they will have an hour to ideate and develop a solution. A delegate of each team will pitch their designs to the group, and a panel of judges composed of past Design Slam winners and individuals from our partner organization will select the winning design.

Participants of all backgrounds and levels of expertise are welcome - no specific tech or coding experience is required. Spectators are also welcome.

Please note: Space is limited, and a waitlist will be available if tickets sell out. Registration will close at noon (12 PM ET) on the day of the event.

Design Slam is part of Philly Tech Week. #PTW22

Date and Time

6:30 PM Wed. May 11

Think Company Office

1315 Walnut Street Second Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19107

Schedule

6:30pm - 7:00pm: Introduction & Design Challenge

7:00pm - 8:00pm: Designing and Slamming

8:00pm - 9:00pm: Team Presentations and Judging

Event Partner

Philly Community Wireless

Sponsors

We’d like to send a very special thank you to these organizations, whose financial support makes PhillyCHI’s events possible.

2022 ANNUAL SPONSORS

Thank you to our 2022 annual sponsors: Blue Plate Minds, Think Company, Rosenfeld, Vanguard, and Drexel College of Computing & Informatics.