Three design-driven teams. Two days. One fantastic gathering of a new and growing breed of user experience designers collaborating to build a better Philippines.

User Experience Philippines (UXPH), in partnership with Globe Labs and Office of Strategy Management and Customer Experience's (OSMCE) Customer Experience Design (CxD) team, held their first grand design conference at The Globe Tower last May 20 and 21, 2017.

Over 200 UX professionals participated at the conference, which carried the theme “Design For A Better Philippines.” The event showcased design thinking as a tool to create solutions for the different sectors of the local society, including health care, academe, business and technology.

CHECK OUT THE DAY 1 HIGHLIGHTS!

Ms. Beck Eclipse, Globe Telecom’s Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO) and head of OSMCE, did the honor of opening the program with a talk about “treating people right to create a Globe of good.” OSMCE’s very own mantra resonates well with the main message of this event: Designers, as problem solvers, can help make a difference if they regard their customers with respect and, in the process, build design, products or services with them in mind.

Our CCEO’s talk was followed by an equally uplifting speech from Sec. Judy Taguiwalo from the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), in which she discussed how the government could benefit from design thinking in terms of generating innovative solutions on a national scale.

The rest of the event featured a slew of compelling topics, from global trends to actual design thinking implementations and case studies, straight from UXPH’s select speakers in and outside the country.

Samantha Yuen - Stepping into our users' worlds

Ben Kim – State of UX in Asia and the Philippines

Jordan Aiko Deja - Employing Computing Techniques towards Better Data-Driven Visual Design

Micael Andrei Diaz de Rivera - Data vs Gut Feeling: Inspiring Design and Creativity without Killing the Magic

Lorenzo Miguel Villalon - Rubber, Meet Road: Field Research and Case Studies in FinTech Application Deployment

Paul Sherman, PhD - User Research At The Speed Of Business: A Field Research Primer And Toolkit

Jennifer Teves - Data Visualization in Healthcare IT 

Mikki Phan, PhD - Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS)

Carolyn Wiener, MA - Enterprise Software UX Engagement Model

Alexis Collado Jr. and Samantha Cruz – Landing that Elusive UX Gig: Jobs, Internship

Design Challenge: Preserving close Filipino family ties with digital technology

On the second day of the conference, UXPH organized design sprint challenges as a means to give a hands-on feel for the participants into the process of design thinking. They distributed the participants into three sessions, each aiming to come up with ideas to solve a problem related to one of these categories: (1) Government, which was participated in by DSWD; (2) Academe, co-facilitated by Ateneo de Manila University’s User Experience Society; and (3) Industry, which was co-facilitated by Globe’s Customer Experience Design team.

Under the Industry category, CXD asked the design thinking enthusiasts, “How can a telco company use technology to strengthen the relationships within the Filipino Family?”

With only three hours to go through the typical five-day design thinking process, it was still quite a feat for each of the six teams to be able to provide several interesting ideas. The winning team prototyped a mobile app that allows for a family selfie with loved ones abroad, effectively presenting and resolving an emotionally charged scenario for those who work outside the country and missing out on being part of the memories created among their families back home.

UXPH Socials Night

Customer Experience Design also arranged for a casual get-together with their fellow organizers  at GlobeLabs and UXPH as well as the speakers from the conference. The intention was not just to unwind amidst the two hectic days of the event, but also to forge a more solid future partnership among these design-driven communities as well as create a venue for Globe designers to be up close and personal with the invited UX experts.

CHECK OUT THE DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS:

Miggy dela Cruz, head of Customer Experience Design, introduced his entire team, and how they champion user centered design in the context of creating wonderful products and services for Globe’s customers.

After the opening remarks came the meet-and-greet “a la speed dating”, UXPH conference speakers were assigned to different cocktail tables so that the rest could have the chance to speak and ask questions with each of them. To add more twist, and as there were speakers who came to the Philippines for the first time, every table had one particular Filipino street food to serve as an ice breaker and a fun conversation piece. Betamax interestingly became a hit, along with isaw, adidas, banana-cue, turon and kwek-kwek.

To complete the party, alongside sumptuous food and drinks, the organizers set up a quiz night followed by an open mic session which, as expected, sealed the reputation of this mini event as “the best socials night ever” that everyone attended.

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About our ICONtributor

Arbs Baquial is a homebody who spends most of his weekends watching US series and K-Dramas, and reading leadership books. A CX guy by heart, he is passionate about every aspect of customer experience - may it be marketing, design or operations. Also a licensed financial advisor and entrepreneur, you can see him after office pitching business proposals and selling financial products to his fellow millennials. He handles programs for User Council, under Design Research, Customer Experience Design, OSMCE.