From Zero to 27: UXLagos is now usable.

I sent out this tweet soon after the last UXLagos meetup on Thursday, 26th May:

I couldn’t believe it’s been that long and that many! Well it’s been two years and counting!

Thirty months ago when we sent out an invite to the first UXLagos meetup, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We simply asked people within the community to join us in an evening of talks about design — about 16 people showed up, all pumped as I am today.

Back in January 2014, I had a conversation with ‘Bosun Tijani about the design culture within the Nigerian technology companies and one of the outcomes of that conversation was the need to have a place where people interested in design can talk about, network, collaborate and most importantly — peer educate.

I believe over the last thirty months we’ve tried to do that with UXLagos.

So what next?

First — change of name.

UXLagos will now be known as usable.

The change of name was necessary because UXLagos is at a point in it’s life where we’re looking to expand our UX evangelism work to other parts of the country.

Without further ado, I’m super excited to announce we’ll be having our first ever meetup outside Lagos — in Abuja.

So if you are a UX designer, product designer, enthusiast or are generally interested in creating better user friendly products, join us Thursday, 16th June @ the re:learn centre for the first usable.abuja meetup. Please RSVP here.

At our core, usable’s end goal is to: 
1. Grow a community of designers who appreciate and evangelize Human Centered Design
2. Facilitate capacity development through UI/UX focused trainings
3. Elevate UX design to the forefront of every product development conversation within the Nigerian Technology ecosystem which will in turn improve the overall quality of local applications

Over the last 30 months, we’ve made incredible progress towards our goals. We’ve built an AMAZING community😍 of over 360 people — most of who have given their time and resources to help us get this far and to everyone, I say THANK YOU!

On a personal note, I am very super excited albeit terrified that we’re launching in a different city.

Dear Abuja, please be kind to us.

Follow @usable_ on Twitter for more information about our meetup.