UXPH (User Experience Philippines) went back to the home court in Metro Manila to hold the last leg of the first National Roadshow carried out across the Philippines. UXPH Roadshow Manila was held on October 26, 2019 at the Globe Tower, Bonifacio Global City.

The UXPH Roadshow is a one-day event with two parts: keynote speakers and lectures in the morning and various design-centered workshops in the afternoon. UXPH partnered with design organizations and companies in Metro Manila enabling them to share their craft with UX practitioners of different backgrounds.

The Morning Talks

Keynote 1: Driving and measuring “experience”

Angela Obias-Tuban, UX Strategy Lead at Metrobank

The day started with an insightful talk from Angela Obias-Tuban, UX Strategy Lead at Metrobank. Angela talked about Driving and Measuring “Experience”, where she shares how getting your team, and eventually your organization, to care about the people—especially the ones that use your products and services—is important to achieve real user-centered design.

She also talks about how values and beliefs drive the way people work. “It’s your statement to the world that your line of work is what you believe in, because this is what you choose to spend time on, rather than doing something else.”

Angela also reminds everyone that there are no small roles in an organization. An example she provided was Google’s Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), which is a way to measure one’s work in relation to the objectives of the company or organization. It provides people a different perspective of looking at their own work, and aims to consider the impact one can give to the company, no matter how menial of a task.

She also told everyone not to “inflict ‘UX’ on others, that you wouldn’t want inflicted on you”. Angela promotes thinking of users and shared, “Let’s not inflict interactions to others that we don’t want inflicted on us”. Similar to the golden rule, but in the context of UX.

Angela talked about the various ways one could measure UX—which she states is more of a measurement of the relationship between the users of products and services over time—done by companies and organizations, and shares what she says is her favorite measuring model: the Design Maturity model by the Artefact Group. This is her favorite model because it shows and differentiates among the following: mastery, impact, performance, empathy, and character. A lot more factors are considered than just simply doing the design work.

She also shared a habit that she found out not enough people do, which is to write the user goal and business goal—which are not always the same!—at the top of the page or canvass she’s working on when doing design work, like wireframing or creating flows. It’s a neat way to constantly remind us of the WHY: why are we doing this in the first place?

Angela wraps up her talk by asking the question: “What does it mean for us to do well?” She asked all participants (whether they be designers or just involved in the whole design process for a particular product or service) to take note and consider what may be good for us now, versus what may be good for the users over time. She reminds everyone to always remember the “why”, and build it into the “how”.

Lightning Talk 1: Defending the role of the design/er

Boggs Labayen, UX Lead at HomeCredit Philippines

For the first lightning talk of the day, Boggs Labayen, who works with UXPH co-presenter Home Credit Philippines, as a UX Lead. Boggs discussed about defending the role of the design/er, and provided examples on how they empower designers within their own company.

Boggs started with sharing a sentiment a lot of designers can relate to: “_Designers are still perceived as people responsible in making things visually or aesthetically appealing._” When in reality, the scope of work of a designer goes beyond just what looks nice on paper or on a screen.

He shared that UX designers should be advocates of customer-centric culture within their own companies, and provided examples on how their company, Home Credit, achieves this in their own teams. Boggs related their organization to a flock of bird murmuring, which is where the flock of birds consists of individual birds flying all about in a seemingly chaotic fashion, but when looked at as a group, they still move in unison.

His second point was that designers should instill the value of the design process, and have users always at the center of all the work done to the different products and services they are working on. From here, people can be influenced into thinking the same way, and make the job of designing for users easier for everyone in the company.

Boggs also emphasized the importance of being a good storyteller for his third point in his talk. He said designers are essentially laying out stories for users to consume. It’s now up to designers to tell a compelling story and get them delighted and keep coming back for more. He shares that one way to see how designs tell stories to users is to do user testing and analyze how people use products and services.

His fourth point was to believe in the goodness of people, and shared a framework that their company uses when working in teams: Fair, Innovative, Results-oriented, Entrepreneurial (FIRE). He tells everyone to “keep the fire burning” within teams to work better together.

To wrap up his talk, Boggs shared his last point:finding the right allies. He says that it’s important to find the right allies within companies and organizations so that designers are not alone when advocating for true good user-centered design.

Keynote 2: Understanding behavioral science to influence better design and team culture

Dae Lee, Culture Designer at Fourth Wall Global

Dae Lee, a Culture Designer at Fourth Wall Global, came back as a speaker in the UXPH National Roadshow, but this time, he shared his knowledge on understanding behavioral science to influence better design and team culture to UX enthusiasts and practitioners in Manila.

He started his talk by explaining company culture design, which is a practice of aligning everyone to understand why they are in the company, know what they are supposed to do, and is the practice of knowing how to get people to do what they need to do because they want to.

Dae emphasizes the importance of knowing where one stands in a company and people that they work with. No matter how much knowledge and tools attained in the world, it won’t have any effect if designers don’t know who the people around them are, as well as what they need to do in that company.

He tackled on UX in the context of behavior. He defined behavior as “a set of actions that has worked for us” and then talks about the perfect user experience, wherein he defines it as “a product or service (that) can be understood and used properly without questions or instructions”. Perfect UX is something that we don’t need to think about in order to do.

Dae also shared that UX should be based on experience, reference, and cognition. He emphasized the importance of context, and provided an example for the audience to see the effectiveness of context when trying to make someone do something.

He then continued to talk about culture, which is the environment people are in, and relates it to behavior, as he shared it’s something that people do even with the lack of instruction. He shared that it’s important to understand people instead of trying to change them, because it’s doubly harder to near impossible to ask someone to change simply because you told them to.

Dae then showed the Flow state graph, from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and explained that though this kind of thinking normally applies to employees when working, this graph or way of thinking can also be applied to customers. To help customers achieve the tasks needed in product or service, there has to be a balance between the difficulty of the challenge presented and the skill set needed to complete it.

He wrapped up his talk by sharing his experience as a LEGO Serious Play® Facilitator wherein he helps people communicate with others through playing, and shared that the playful environment that Lego creates helps people share more information about themselves than in a more serious setting, like a meeting.

He also reiterated his point before ending his talk: “Don’t try to change people. Understand them and create the environment where they choose to change.”

Lightning Talk 2: Empathizing through the Margins

Mark Lacsamana, Senior Product Designer at Kalibrr

For the second and also the last lightning talk, Mark Lacsamana, Senior Product Designer at Kalibrr, called everyone’s attention and talked about Empathizing through the Margins: Designing for Inclusivity.

Mark started his lightning talk by talking about privilege, which is ‘a special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group’. He demonstrated this as he asked the audience to raise their hand if they belong to a certain group of people based on characteristics like skin color, ethnicity, sex, gender, and orientation.

He continued by talking about his own experiences of both privilege and marginalization, and explained that both these things can live on top of each other and exist in the same space. It’s not always one or the other only. He stated: “Privilege isn’t just about what’s in your wallet, and marginalization is not just poverty porn.”

Mark also explained that throughout the years of talking about empathy, people were oversold it to the point that oversimplified it. It’s important to raise this point because designers are in the business of empathy. They focused too much on finding similarities between people that they forgot about finding out what makes people different as well.

He then stated: “You can’t recognize fear, pain, or joy, if you’ve never experienced it before.” Then he asks the question, ‘how do we truly design for the marginalized?”

He answered this by sharing that designers can start by forming inclusive teams and design communities. This is where they can start to make an impact to help the marginalized. After all, including people who have actually experienced the struggles first-hand would contribute more helpful and true-to-life experiences than those who haven’t gone through or even have any idea of the hardships other marginalized communities face.

He ended his talk by reminding people to design with users in mind. Designers put design on a pedestal so much that they might also be forgetting what is really needed to be done: to stop designing FOR users, and start designing WITH users.

Keynote 3: Lean Cross-cultural research in practice

Li-Wei “Ricky” Yu, UX Researcher at Mozilla Taiwan

To end the morning sessions, keynote speaker Ricky Yu, a UX Researcher at Mozilla Taiwan, shared insights about lean cross-cultural research in practice. He shared his own personal experiences while going around various Southeast Asian countries—like the Philippines—and how he and his team conducted their lean cross-cultural research.

Ricky started his talk by sharing his first culture shock experience when he got to the Philippines: he rode a jeepney and had to figure out everything from paying to getting off the jeep.

He also shared that when he went to the grocery store, he thought that sachets were small in size because it was designed for travelers. To his surprise, he learned that it was made that way for people who live day by day and don’t have money to get the bigger sizes.

His last culture shock experience was for paying goods at a sari-sari store, where he saw that there was a wide variety of goods being sold and hung on the gated fronts of these stores. He was also confused at first where to pay, and was surprised when he saw the small opening where you place the cash payment to give to the storekeeper.

After this short story telling session, he then proceeded to talk about Mozilla Taiwan, the product innovation team for emerging markets and the team he works with, and shares how they currently do lean cross-cultural research around South East Asia.

His first point when doing lean cross-cultural research is to take note of empathy, and breaking one’s mental model. He stated, “Don’t use your own glasses to look at the world, especially if you want to understand the other person.” It’s important to have an open mind when doing research, especially with differing cultures, because designers wouldn’t know what will happen.

His next point is to always be humble, especially when interacting with different types of people, no matter the age, gender, social status, or occupation. When doing research, meeting with people from all walks of life, and being humble and open will lead to notice and learn more things about them, than trying to impose cultures on them.

Ricky’s next point was to always be curious, which is an essential skill in the field of research. Always be on the lookout for new things, and be eager to learn about them. He also shared another important factor when doing research in different countries: be culturally sensitive. A prime example of this is visiting a temple, and having to remove shoes before entering the vicinity as a sign of respect. As researchers, it’s important to note all these things even before visiting the place so as to respect the culture of the people and the place researched on.

He also encouraged sharing research findings to everyone in the team and company or organization, because this gives them an idea on how users actually do things, and helps them understand users better. He shared different kinds of methods that people can use to do lean cross-cultural research.

Ricky also shared another tried-and-tested method one can use when doing research in different countries: intercept people in the streets, because that’s where the users are, and are in their very candid selves.

He also talked about how visual tools are helpful when doing contextual interviews, since different people might understand the same thing differently, especially when there’s a cultural barrier. It’s important to get people on the same page to achieve the results needed to help understand their behavior better.

Ricky also reminded everyone to do field debriefing after every research session, to help remember all the important and essential aspects during the session, like during interviews.

Ricky shared a quote from Robert Capa: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.” He ended his talk by challenging everyone with the question: “If you are not close to your user, how can you make the best products for them?”

The Workshop Tracks

The afternoon session had participants break into different workshops—two sessions of Figma 101, Analyzing Qualitative Usability Tests, a UX Research Workshop, Quantifying the User Experience, and Design Thinking: Double Diamond Process. OneRent also hosted their second Design Competition during the roadshow.

Workshops 1 and 2: Figma Software (Basic and Advanced)

The Figma workshop series comes to Manila! Anjo Cerdeña and Jelvin Base from Figma Philippines held separate workshops that taught workshop Figma to participants based on their skill level: Basic and Advanced. Figma is a cloud-based collaborative design tool where teams can achieve a shared understanding around design without worrying about syncing, exporting, or installing software. The participants learned all about the tool and created effective prototypes within the software.

Figma Software: Basic session with Anjo Cerdeña

Figma Software: Advanced session with Jelvin Base

Workshop 3: Analyzing Qualitative Usability Tests

Analyzing Qualitative Usability Tests Workshop with Christine Balatbat

Christine Balatbat, a UX Researcher from JG Summit Holdings, facilitated the workshop on Analyzing Qualitative Usability Tests. She taught participants how to select the best analysis framework and how to synthesize data.

Workshop 4: UX Research Workshop

UX Research Workshop with Matt Green

Matthew Green, a senior designer at Asian Development Bank, held a UX research workshop which taught participants how to start or build a research team and what to do with a lot of data. He facilitated a practical workshop with hands-on learning on how to plan UX research when solving problems. He gave an overview on specific qualitative methods and covered biases and assumptions.. Participants did in-depth exercises on conducting interviews, downloading data, and learned insights from Matt on practical uses of UX research in their work.

Workshop 5: Quantifying the User Experience

Quantifying the User Experience with Mica Diaz de Rivera

This workshop on Quantifying the User Experience was facilitated by Mica Diaz de Rivera, who was one of the keynote speakers back in UXPH Roadshow: Cebu. He facilitated a workshop on how to work backwards from the most common questions and problems one might encounter when conducting, analyzing, and reporting on user research projects.

Workshop 6: Design Thinking: Double Diamond Process

Design Thinking: Double Diamond Process with Antonet Kay Domingo

Antonet Kay Domingo, a UX Lead at ING Business Shared Services, facilitated a workshop that taught participants on how to use the double diamond process when doing design thinking exercises. Given the context of the design thinking methodology, participants learned about the two ways of thinking—divergent and convergent thinking—and how they can apply and use this methodology when figuring out the right problem to solve, as well as solving them properly.

Onerent Design Competition

Design competition with Onerent

UXPH co-presenter, Onerent, has joined the Manila Roadshow and held another design competition so participants have a way to showcase their design skills. They had another Huion tablet ready to give away to the winner of this challenge!

Photo during design competition with Onerent

Awarding the winner of the Huion tablet

Wrapping up the event, and the roadshow series

On top of a whole day full of learning, each conference attendee received a UXPH Roadshow T-Shirt, limited edition UXPH Roadshow stickers, prizes, and more giveaways and benefits from generous sponsors: UXArmy, Stylegenie, and the Interaction Design Foundation.

The UXPH Keynote Speakers and Facilitators receiving CollaboX Speaker Tokens

(From left to right; Jordan Deja, Dae Lee, Li-Wei “Ricky” Yu, Boggs Labayen, Mark Lacsamana, Angela Obias-Tuban, Aldrich Tan)

Winners of giveaways from Symph

Winner of giveaway from CollaboX

Winners of giveaway from Manulife

Batch 1 winners of giveaways from our Co-presenter, HomeCredit

Batch 2 winners of giveaways from our Co-presenter, HomeCredit

Winners of giveaway from ING

The Winner of the Grand Prize iPhone 11 giveaway from our second Co-presenter, Onerent

Ely Apao, one of the founders of UXPH, also made a behind-the-scenes video on what happened during the Manila roadshow. Watch it on YouTube.

We’ll have a full event video up soon! It’ll be posted in this section.

Using our 2020 vision

We’ve reached the end of the roadshow series for the year, but that doesn’t mean it’s over! UXPH will be coming back in 2020 to bring design to more parts of the Philippines—all for empowering and lifting the design communities emerging from different parts of the country.

Have suggestions on where to go next for UXPH Roadshow 2020? Got leads to help UXPH get connected with someone in the area? Want to be a part of the team? Send a message on the Facebook page or email info@uxph.org! Let’s all help push for a more collaborative and mature design-driven Philippines!

Don’t forget to share your experiences online by posting about it with the hashtags #UXPHRoadshow and #UXPHRoadshowMNL and keep updated on upcoming UX meetups and events by following us on different social media platforms!

Thank you to our sponsors and partners

UXPH would like to thank all of the companies, communities, and groups who sponsored the 2019 UXPH National Roadshow, helping us turn it into a huge success. We’d also like to give special thanks to CebuXD and UXDVO during the Cebu and Davao legs, because without them, this National Roadshow series wouldn’t have been so successful!

If your company or organization is interested in supporting UXPH and our national effort of connecting the design communities across The Philippines for a more mature, design-driven country, please get in touch with us at info@uxph.org.

Our Co-presenter

Gold sponsors

CollaboX, Design Center of the Philippines (DCP), Globe Labs, ING, Manulife, and UXArmy

Silver sponsors

Canva and StyleGenie Asia

Bronze sponsors

Symph, Art n’ Nature, and Dash10

Our Community Partners

Developer Student Club Loyola, Interaction Design Foundation, Manila Design Week Philippines, Roots Podcast Design, TechShake, UXSEA Society, SkyLabs, User Experience Society - ADMU, User Experience Society - DLSU, User Experience Society - UST, and Philippine Web Designers Organization

Our Media Partners

ABS-CBN Corporation, ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC), and Green Giant FM

On September 28, 2019, UXPH (User Experience Philippines) held the second leg of their first ever National Roadshow across the Philippines, and landed in Davao City.

The UXPH Roadshow events are structured with keynote speakers in the morning, followed by various design-centered workshops in the afternoon. UXPH partnered with UXDVO, the local non-profit design community in Davao comprised of current and aspiring UX practitioners from the surrounding region.

The Morning Talks

Keynote 1: UX for Designers, Developers, and anyone in between

Mica Diaz de Rivera, Head of Operations at Make Technology Inc.

The day started with a talk from Mica Diaz de Rivera, Head of Operations at Make Technology Inc. on UX for Designers, Developers, and anyone in between. He had 5 major points he wanted to share with the audience, comprised mainly of students, developers who want to know more about UX, and professionals looking to start their UX career.

To further drive one of the points he shared, he asked participants to partner up and do a bunch of tasks in succession. At first, he asked each pair to recite numbers in succession after their partner said it. So if one person says “1”, their partner goes “2”, and then it repeats. He made each task harder to show how consistency—or lack of it—affects how people do certain things.

Here’s a preview of what participants did during his talk:

He ends his talk by challenging everyone to live life more, so they can gain insights and be inspired anywhere and everywhere they go. By doing so, they help become more holistic designers and are constantly reminded of different ways to build and create delightful experiences.

Keynote 2: UX Management

Nico Encarnacion, UX Manager at Make Technology Inc.

The next speaker, Nico Encarnacion, who works with Mica at Make Technology as a UX Manager, shared points about UX management, and shared his own experiences with his team as examples to his points.

Nico also shared the different types of people one may encounter based on how they work. You have superstars, who have a steep growth trajectory when given work and give an excellent performance upfront; rockstars, who have a gradual growth trajectory and can still provide excellent output; marathoners, who start their tasks as soon as they are given to them,and finish it on time; and, sprinters, who are the “crammers” and start and finish their tasks a few days before their deadline.

The points he shared with the attendees were all connected to real-life experiences he’s gone through: learn how to tell stories, know how to sell UX to your stakeholders, learn how to collaborate, document and standardize everything, be radically candid—he even recommended the book, “Radical Candor”, which was one of his favorite books—know your people, and take care of your people.

Keynote 3: Your UX mission: undercover, unleashed

Ondrej Machart, Product and Design Manager from Home Credit Philippines

Ondrej Machart, a Product and Design Manager from Home Credit Philippines, our co-presenter for the 2019 UXPH Roadshow, talked about a particular UX skill—that he later revealed to be user interviews–how important it is to hone this and practice it to further improve the products and services we design.

He relates UX to World War II, and used Winston Churchill as an example of what UX designers need to do more and do better: talk to the people. Design can become more effective if we talk to the people who will actually be using it, and not the stakeholders who may be detached from knowing the actual needs of the people they want to serve.

Ondrej wanted to demonstrate how a user interview happens, and he asked for a random volunteer from the audience. He demonstrated a live user interview in front of all attendees, to further prove his point on how user interviews helped their company understand what their customers need. He pointed out that doing user interviews is like a detective, by keep digging on asking people.

He also shared some resources about user interviews and how to talk to people for them to learn more. The following are: The User Experience Team of One, Interviewing Users, and Intercom on Jobs To Be Done.

He ends his talk by encouraging everyone to keep talking to the people, and to empathize with them, since they are the ones who hold the key for designers to make better, human-centered products.

Keynote 4: Designing our career and forming design teams

Ely Apao, Customer Experience Manager at JG Summit Holdings, Inc. and Co-founder of UXPH

Our last speaker, Ely Apao, Customer Experience Manager at JG Summit Holdings, Inc. and Co-founder of UXPH, ended the morning session by discussing designing our career as UX practitioners, and shared his knowledge on forming design teams.

Ely shared that last year, he and a group of people gathered what people thought what skills were needed by UX designers, and came up with: Business Alignment, Research, Organization & Communication, Visual Design, and Technical Knowledge.

He also shared a bunch of learning methods and frameworks the attendees can use and apply in their day-to-day activities. One of them was the Feynmann method, where the goal is for people to learn a particular topic better by gauging how well they are able to explain the topic to someone else and have them learn about it.

Ely ended the morning session by talking about applying the design thinking method not only to create wonderful user-centered products and services, but to one’s career as well. It’s best to be able to find out what problems one needs to face before coming up with a solution.

The Workshop Tracks

The afternoon session had participants break up into five different workshops: UX 101, Figma 101, Building a UX career Matrix for Students, and a Design Competition hosted by OneRent.

Workshops 1 and 2: UX 101

The UX 101 workshops were in such demand that we had to create two break out sessions! Raine Liao and Boggs Labayen from Home Credit Philippines facilitated these two workshops and taught participants all about the fundamentals and principles of UX.

UX 101 session 1 with Raine Liao

UX 101 session 2 with Boggs Labayen

Workshop 3: Figma 101

Figma 101 Workshop with Miramark Diaz leading the discussion

The Figma workshop series continues with us in Davao! This round of workshops were facilitated by Paul Sabandal, Edward Alonzo, and Miramark Diaz, facilitators from the Figma Philippines community. Figma is a cloud-based collaborative design tool where teams can achieve a shared understanding around design without worrying about syncing, exporting, or installing software. The participants learned all about the tool and created effective prototypes within the software.

Workshop 4: Building a UX Career Matrix for Students

Jordan Deja, a Professor from De La Salle University, held a workshop for students and young professionals looking to start a UX career to learn how to build a UX career matrix for themselves.

The workshop was filled up mainly by college students looking to explore design and UX as a viable career choice. They worked on constructing a journey roadmap that they can use in planning their careers. The session was insightful and helped students plan their next steps, know which specific career moves to take and identify gaps and areas for improvement within themselves.

Building a UX Career Matrix for Students workshop with Jordan Deja

Workshop 5: Onerent Design Competition

Our co-presenter, Onerent, held a design competition on the day of the UXPH Roadshow: Davao so participants have a way to showcase their design skills. The winner of the competition wins a Huion tablet, sponsored by Onerent. There will be another competition in our Manila leg with another Huion tablet up for grabs!

Marx Consuegra facilitating the Onerent design competition

Awarding the winner of the Huion tablet
(From left to right: Marx Consuegra, John Paul Labro, Ray Wei)

Wrapping up the event

The UXPH and UXDVO team were so excited that a lot of students and professionals came out to our event to learn more about UX. They all officially became a part of the Davao creative community at the Finster Auditorium of Ateneo de Davao University.

UXPH wanted to make sure we gave a big impression on the local Davao community. On top of a whole day full of learning, each conference attendee received a UXPH Roadshow T-Shirt, limited edition UXPH Roadshow stickers, prizes, and more giveaways and benefits from our generous sponsors UXArmy, Stylegenie, and the Interaction Design Foundation.

The UXPH Keynote Speakers and Facilitators receiving CollaboX Speaker Tokens
(From left to right; Nico Encarnacion, Edward Alonzo, Paul Sabandal, Raine Liao, Miramark Diaz, Boggs Labayen, Onrdraj Machart, Ely Apao, Mica de Rivera)

Winners of giveaways from Symph

Winners of giveaways from our Co-presenter, HomeCredit

The Winner of the Grand Prize iPhone 11 giveaway from our second Co-presenter, Onerent

Designers.cam—run by Ely Apao—also made a video highlighting some of the activities during the Davao roadshow:

The last leg

Our third and final stop for our 3-part roadshow around the Philippines is Manila. We’re going back to The Globe Tower in BGC on October 26, 2019, so Make sure to spread the word to all your Manila friends and friendly companies!

For more information, check out our Manila event page and share your excitement online by using the hashtag #UXPHRoadshowMNL!

Don’t forget to share your experiences online by posting about it with the hashtags #UXPHRoadshow and #UXPHRoadshowDVO and keep updated on upcoming UX meetups and events by following our social media channels:

For more details, you can visit our website: https://roadshow.uxph.org/manila

Get tickets via Eventbrite: https://uxphroadshowmanila.eventbrite.com

Thank you to our sponsors

We’d like to thank all of the companies, communities, and groups who sponsored the 2019 UXPH National Roadshow, helping us turn it into a huge success.

If your company or organization is interested in supporting UXPH and our national effort of connecting the design communities across The Philippines for a more mature, design-driven country, please get in touch with us at info@uxph.org.

Our Co-presenter

Silver sponsors

Anflocor Management, Canva, and StyleGenie Asia

Bronze sponsors

Symph, Art n’ Nature, and Dash10

Our Community Partners

Davao JS, DevCon Davao, Davao Graphic Designers Community, UXDVO, Interaction Design Foundation, Roots Podcast Design, TechShake, UXSEA Society, and Philippine Web Designers Organization

On August 31, 2019, UXPH (User Experience Philippines) held its first ever National Roadshow across the Philippines, starting in Cebu City.

The Roadshow events are structured with keynote speakers in the morning followed by various workshops for UX methodologies in the afternoon. UXPH partnered with CebUXD, the local design organization in Cebu comprised of a diverse group of design enthusiasts and practitioners. They helped connect the Cebuanos who wanted to learn more about different UX topics and participate in workshops facilitated by different professionals.

The Morning Talks

Keynote 1: All about UX design deliverables

The day started with a talk from Mica Diaz de Rivera, Head of Operations at Make Technology Inc. on Demystifying UX Design Deliverables. He shared that, according to a study from Nielsen Norman Group (NNGroup), the top 3 UX deliverables are prototypes, usability reports, and customer journey maps. He then connected these three deliverables with the 3 workshops that would happen in the afternoon session of the roadshow.

Keynote 2: Building UX design teams within organizations

The next speaker, Fish Ibasco, Experience Design Lead at Accenture Philippines, then talked about how to jumpstart UX in organizations, and retold stories on how she landed her job at Accenture. She explained how she looked for members for her new UX design team, and related the experience to Game of Thrones. She considered herself as Sansa Stark, the “innocent designer”.

Fish gave tips on how to plan for a minimum viable design team in companies and organizations, where one should consider the UX maturity within the organization, what the demands of the projects are, any skill gaps that need to be addressed, and the maturity of the UX community as well. She also reminded everyone that these should eventually scale depending on the growth of the team and the company.

Keynote 3: Designing at Home Credit

Oliver Bayani from Home Credit Philippines, our co-presenter for the 2019 UXPH Roadshow, then took the stage and shares how design is done at his company. He discusses how design culture emerges as it comes out naturally within the different interactions with your teammates within your company.

Keynote 4: Design and team culture in the context of behavioral science

Our last speaker, Dae Lee, Culture Designer at Fourth Wall Global, ends the morning session by sharing his knowledge on behavioral science and how context is very important when doing things to influence or change the design and team culture within your company.

Dae shared how motivation, ability, and triggers can change or influence behavior, and related these to different UX methods that are being used by many designers today.

He also reminds everyone that they shouldn’t try to change people, and instead know and understand the context behind them and form the environment where they’ll be the ones to choose to change for themselves.

The Workshop Tracks

The afternoon session had participants break up into three different workshops: Figma 101, Creating actionable customer journey maps, and Applying usability testing principles in the workplace.

Workshop 1: Figma 101

Members of CebUXD held closed-door workshops with smaller groups and taught them all about the basics of using Figma, one of the collaborative design tools of choice in the design industry. The participants learned all about the intricacies of the tool and how to create quick but effective prototypes within the software.

Workshop 2: Creating actionable customer journey maps

Raine Liao, a UX designer from Home Credit Philippines, taught participants how to create actionable customer journey maps that they may apply and use within their teams. The workshop was a mix of a lecture on what customer journey maps are, and a hands-on practical application of journey mapping through the use of a board game.

Workshop 3: Applying usability testing principles in the workplace

Anj Garong, a Product Design Manager at Sprout Solutions, discussed the basics of usability testing and facilitated an interactive lecture and hands-on activities for participants to get a knack on conducting usability testing sessions. She also shared some tips and best practices on how to apply the usability testing principles at work, so they can share the culture within their companies as well.

Wrapping up the event

The day was very packed for all of our attendees. We received fantastic feedback from all of our participants, and our event was featured in the local news channel, the SunStar!

UXPH wanted to make sure we gave a big impression on the local Cebu community. On top of the information-rich program, each conference attendee received a UXPH Roadshow T-Shirt, limited edition UXPH Roadshow stickers, and prizes and giveaways from our generous sponsors.

As a bonus, volunteers from CebUXD put together a Same Day Edit video of the event!

What’s next?

Our 2nd stop is Davao City on September 28, 2019! We’ve paired up with the local design group, UXDVO, to bring you another full day conference packed with speakers and workshops in Ateneo de Davao university.

For more details, you can visit our website: https://roadshow.uxph.org/davao

Get tickets via Eventbrite: https://uxphroadshowdavao.eventbrite.com

Our 3rd and final stop for the year is in our homebase, Manila, on October 26th, 2019. Please stay tuned for details!

Thank you to our sponsors

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the companies and groups who sponsored the 2019 UXPH Roadshow, helping us turn it into a huge success.

If your company is interested in supporting UXPH and our national effort of connecting the design communities across The Philippines for a more mature, design-driven country, please get in touch with us at info@uxph.org.

Our Co-presenter

Silver sponsors

Canva and StyleGenie Asia

Bronze sponsors

Symph, UNISOL, Art n’ Nature, Insular Life, Grafik 9, and Abstract Digital Inc.

Our Community Partners

CebuUXD, UX Davao, TechShake, Cebu Design Week, and Philippine Web Designers Organization