UXcamp Ottawa: What designers will be discussing in Canada’s capital city

“People who are starting off typically look for more lean organizations, like startups or companies that have very established UX practices,” said Rachieru, whose Twitter handle is the aptly-named @corneliux. “If I were to advise somebody to start somewhere, I’m not sure the public sector is the first thing that comes to mind.”

However Rachieru’s passion for design led him to co-found UXcamp Ottawa, which runs November 9-10 in the nation’s capital. Now in its fourth year, Rachieru expects about 400 people will attend, including some big-name UX speakers like Shopify’s Jonathan Snook and Adaptive Path founder Jesse James Garrett.

The following is a Q&A with Rachieru about Ottawa’s design community, UX Camp and the evolution of UX.

What makes Ottawa a hotbed for UX?

Ottawa is not traditionally a design mecca, but in the last five years the design community has grown exponentially because of a lot of startups that are in the area. Ottawa used to be known as Silicon Valley North in the heydays of the Nortels and Alcatels. All the people that used to work for those companies moved to startups and now with the role of design in technology there are more and more people that are joining our field.

What have you noticed in the growth of the UX community in Ottawa?

It’s grown in multiple ways. The obvious one is in the amount of people looking for help in the design sense, so you see a lot of technology companies trying to ramp up their user research teams, their design teams, their visual research aspect of product design. If you do a search on Monster or Workopolis you will find that there are a lot of jobs compared to five years ago, where if you wanted to get a job in this field you had to explain to people what it is that we do and what the value is that we bring. You basically had to sell yourself. Now, if you know what you’re doing in this field, chances are that you absolutely won’t have any problems finding employment.

Is this a growth that is being driven top-down by companies or is it more grassroots?

Apple is the poster child for UX design. They didn’t really innovate product-wise, they innovated experience-wise. When they introduced the iPod and iPhone, people loved using their device. The iPod was an MP3 player and there were plenty of MP3 players around, but the nice thing about the iPod was the experience of using it with the click wheel; the way the industrial design was all put together is what made it an iconic product. Because of the success of companies like that, people are putting a lot more stock into design. That is why these days even at the board of directors table people are saying we may have a great product, but it has to look good and be pleasurable to use.

How has that manifested itself in technology companies?

Before when you were talking about a tech company or a startup, you always had somebody with an engineering background being the leader of the company, or you had somebody who was a business major that was the head of the company. The idea of the design founders – especially in Silicon Valley – is very trendy right now. A lot of newer startups have been founded by designers. Instead of having the technical know-how and then getting some designers to come in and make it look good, they have the know-how to design something and they hire engineers and software developers to build it for them. It’s a paradigm shift.

Who are some of the big UX names that will speak at this year’s conference?

We have Adaptive Path founder Jesse James Garrett who actually coined the term “Ajax” (used to describe rich Internet applications that eliminate the reloading of Web pages). He’s the founder of the largest UX company in the world. He’s going to talk about how they create products that engage users. We’ve got Dan Szuc coming in from Hong Kong and he’s going to be talking about the next generation of UX practices and how thinking has to evolve from a tactical thinking to a more holistic approach to integrating UX into product design. We have Russ Unger and he will be making parallels between UX design and the Muppets.

What are some of the main UX challenges that you’re trying to help designers overcome?

The mandate of our conference is to provide inspiration; it’s not so much to solve problems. This is not a workshop. What I found was missing in our market space geographically is inspiration. All of the major conferences that are happening in our field are in San Francisco or New York, so we wanted to get the people who speak at those conferences to come down here and speak to our community and get them immersed into what we do.

Why has UX Camp Ottawa been so successful?

For the first time in the region people feel like they’re part of a community; people feel like they’ve found their tribe. These 400 people don’t get together at all during the year. There are smaller meetups that attract between 20-30 people once a month, but there are people that you know are in your field but you don’t have a way to talk to them unless there is an event like this. A huge part of this is the networking and the socializing as much as it is the inspiration.

Was there a tipping point that you can put your finger on where it ramped up from your expectations to what it is now?

It exceeded expectations from the get-go. In the first year we had speakers from Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal and our expectations were that we’re never going to get people to come to a not-for-profit conference, especially some of these big names. The tipping point was in year two when we realized that all these big names in our industry are actually really community oriented. None of us are paid for this and for them to come down and speak free of charge is also a big part of what makes this successful. If you look at the ticket prices ($230) and you compared them to a typical event where some of our speakers are attending, you’re talking about (prices being) five times lower. We allow people to afford it. We’ve reached a point where we can get pretty much everybody in UX.

Are there other spinoff events or activities that you’re planning in conjunction with this conference?

We’re trying to encourage people to start attending those year-round events. It would be nice to see more people more often and build momentum leading into UX Camp instead of losing touch for the year.