Recap: UXPH Roadshow 2019, Davao

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

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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