World Interaction Design Day 2019 - Manila

Sending our love to the 60+ Filipino designers who braved Manila traffic to join the very first meetup of Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Manila last Tuesday, September 25, 2019 at WeWork RCBC Plaza in Makati.

In time with World Interaction Design Day, we think the meetup was a wonderful way to kickstart the country’s own IxDA chapter.

Regional heads of the IxDA broke the ice with a warm video, welcoming the Philippines as part of over 200 local groups supporting a global community of more than 100,000 designers.

We are still in awe with the support IxDA Manila got from InVision, Adobe, Bukas.ph and (last but not the least!) WeWork. IxDA is a member-supported organization and meetups like this is not possible without the generosity of these amazing brands.

The Theme

From exploring issues about diversity and inclusion in design in 2018, this year’s World Interaction Day invited the community to tackle topics about trust and responsibility not just about concerning design work, but also about office life, communities, and beyond.

First up on the stage was Eugene Gagolinan, a Product Manager in PayMaya, followed by Therese Cruz, a User Research Lead at Grab Singapore.

The night was capped by Carlo Almendral, a Board Director for Rappler & FTW Foundation and Innovation Council for The United Nations’ World Food Programme.

It starts in the office

Gagolinan reminded the audience that the trust we seek to earn from our users starts from building trust in the workplace.

“Being trusted is scary. It’s a responsibility. Someone else’s trust makes you important.”

A good place to begin is paying attention on how your team defines roles, the tools they use, and the things they build. This includes not just Designers, but also Developers, Content strategists, Information architects, and other roles important in creating products.

Only in defining such roles can managers and design leads attempt to explore and adopt a design framework (a.k.a workflows) of their own where everybody involved in your product understands the sequence of work that needs to be done.

“It’s much like creating a play in Basketball… something they can depend on,” Gagolinan explained.

“Yes, we design for users. But don’t forget that we are also designing for people in the company,” he added.

Lead by example

On the heels of talking about work structures, Cruz shared how UX Research evolved in Grab since she joined in 2017 as a Research Lead.

Ad hoc work is dreaded by all, Cruz acknowledged, but managers can limit these nasty surprises by identifying the product roadmap and planning research work in advance.

This means talking to Product Managers to understand what they need and creating a timeline for each research request. In doing so, everybody in the company understands the team’s capacity and commitments they have made.

Another challenge shared by almost all companies of any scale is the role of research being limited to validating ideas.

Understanding that UX research has so much to offer, Cruz and her team responded by offering research across the product development cycle. This required them to expand their research tool kit and communicating them to everybody involved — a task, she admits, is easier said than done.

In this way, research can be involved not just when the solution or strategy is set, but also when the company is dealing with unknowns about a concept or idea.

“Establish trust by turning up, before getting buy-in,” Cruz said, explaining the persistence and attitude necessary to introduce bold but valuable changes in work that everybody would love to be a part of.

Designing ethically is a reactive skill

With all the merits of empathy for creating amazing designs and experiences, Almendral pointed out how it can easily be twisted and weaponized for spiteful ends.

He went on to suggest using metrics such as ”Personal Data Points accessed per API user” for added transparency in light of rampant data leaks and the growing invasiveness of social media. Almendral even talked about using a Global Median Income for designers after seeing how salaries in the US and SEA countries like the Philippines grossly differ.

“Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and the right thing to do,” he quoted Potter Stewart saying, a Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

To start asking pertinent questions about ethics in your design, Alemendral recommends to make sure that user activity concerning your product is properly and consistently measured first. These data are then discussed in detail by the team every week.

Designers are responsible to ask the big question on whether the team and management are okay with the results and the way data is gathered. Also important in the exercise is asking yourself if you are okay with the results, if it aligns to your own moral compass, and your appetite for compromise.

“Designing is a proactive skill. Designing ethically is a reactive skill,” Almendral added.

And then we proceeded over to networking and photos.

Overall, this was an event we’re extremely proud of. And we hope that those who attended found the information and advice shared by our experts practical and actionable.

If you’d like more information on IXDA Manila, our upcoming meetups and events, or ask anything, feel free to contact us at manila@ixda.org. Thanks again to all of you for a wonderful event!

PS: Yes, we will be bring much more pizza next time. We promise!

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