In July, I was very fortunate to be in beautiful Vancouver to attend the Design & Content Conference hosted by Republic of Quality. I’ve never been to such a large design conference before and I was super excited to connect with other designers and see the diversity of speakers and talks. I was not disappointed – I was so inspired by all the fantastic talks and the new friends I made. I gained so much to bring back to my work at Onyx Point, LLC.

Some very brief highlights from my trip

Day 1

The first day for me was the Building Flexible Design Systems workshop with Yesenia Perez-Cruz, a Senior Design Director for Vox Media. I learned about deploying methods and strategies to identify design patterns and design components while keeping in mind the the larger goals of the system and the brand. She also demonstrated how to scale a design system – all really useful for the design system that I’m currently working on!

Day 2

The talks started with Kat Holme, author and founder of Mismatch.design, and her amazing Mismatch talk on inclusive (and exclusive) design. It is important to recognize who is excluded from current systems and to involve them in the design process.

Design with and by excluded communities, not for them. - Great statement during today's talk from @katholmes #dcc18 pic.twitter.com/DEJT8B4X1C

— James Ditmer (@diegosocart12) July 26, 2018

Sara Getz, a Content Strategy Manager for Facebook, encouraged designers to really understand the user’s point of view as they interact with your product. She emphatically taught everyone that YOU ARE NOT YOUR USER.

OK GOT IT SARA 😁 #dcc18 pic.twitter.com/oXaWlsLj38

— Paul McAleer 💎🐦 (@paulmcaleer) July 26, 2018

Paul McAleer, a self proclaimed fan of awesome things and Associate Experience Director at Rightpoint, gave a humorous presentation on the information architecture of pants.

this is a slide for a design conference but this is a slide for everyone #DCC18 @paulmcaleer pic.twitter.com/cPjCf3m4TC

— 🆑 (@courteroy) July 26, 2018

I also experienced a powerful talk by Sara Wachter-Boettcher, a Content Strategist and UX expert, on ethical design and how tech is failing us. I’m still upset I didn’t buy her book, Technically Wrong! It should definitely go on our office bookshelf.

put it on a slide, put it on a shirt, louder for those in the back #dcc18 @sara_ann_marie pic.twitter.com/NIaVeTs0Ko

— 🆑 (@courteroy) July 26, 2018

I made super awesome friends!

I met some amazing people at the conference. Kind of restored my faith in a lot of things. #TheBand #FirstAlbum pic.twitter.com/06eWs4S8Wn

— David C. Waddell (@davidcwaddell) July 28, 2018

We also attended the live No, You Go podcast-style show! If you haven’t followed them before, start now. They empower professional women. The recording of the live show is available to listen at https://www.breaker.audio/no-you-go/e/36561418.

So encouraging to hear badass boss gals @yeseniaa & @tarasdoingstuff each describe finding their feet on stage & what motivated them to become a speaker for the @noyougoshow at #dcc18 pic.twitter.com/kWNeGQTiYm

— Celeste Côté (@CelesteCote) July 27, 2018

Day 3

Gagan Diesh, founder of DesignStamp, gave an important talk about being an ally of under-represented groups. He also had one of my favorite slides that I share with everyone.

#dcc18 @diesh “Being tolerant, and being intolerant of intolerance, are not contradictions.” pic.twitter.com/UtQQQ1gLUe

— Andy Welfle ✏️ (@awelfle) July 27, 2018

Farai Madzima, a Logistics Experience Designer for Shopify, did great storytelling in his talk about cultural bias in design. He ran out of time but I would have loved hearing him speak more!

Some sound advice from Miles Davis to Hugh Masekela that @farai_uxguy is sharing with us: Take your sh*t from home. Put that with the sh*t you’ve learned here. that’s gonna be a muthaf*cka. #DCC18 pic.twitter.com/9TtvxJCXbR

— Stevie Thuy Anh (@StevieNguyenyvr) July 27, 2018

My professors and friends from the Human-Centered Computing program at UMBC would have loved Paige Maguire’s talk about conversational design. She is a Design Director at Fjord. She asks, “Why make our voice interfaces human-like? For whom does it benefit? Does it become skeuomorphism?”

“We’re the super-futurist designers. We have a tremendous amount of influence in this space. How we protect each other is up to us.” #dcc18 pic.twitter.com/8t3QMXQDAU

— Tiffy Riel (@tiffyriel) July 27, 2018

Wrapping up

Thank you to Republic of Quality for organizing the amazing, inspiring, and powerful conference and to Shopify for the DCC Fund that enabled me to be able to attend! You should come next year too! https://content.design/

You can read more about Onyx Point, LLC's commitment to user-centered design here and here, and find out about the products we are building at SIMP.

design, ux, content, inclusion, diversity

Share this story