RRS2018 homepage thumbnail.png

ORGANIZING A NEW UX RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Problem

Back in 2015, the UX design community in Vancouver was thriving, but events that directly focused on UX research were rare. There seemed to be UX researchers working at a handful of companies, but I didn’t know them and there wasn’t a community or meetup to connect to them.

Idea

One morning over breakfast, Elynn Lorimer, Sheila Mackenzie (Spatial R&D, was Niiu Digital), Stepan Doubrava (Samsung) and I talked about the need for an event to promote UX research and build up the UX research community in Vancouver.

With help from many volunteers, we formed, organized and ran the Radical Research Summit (RRS), a one-day event to bring together researchers, UX practitioners, product managers and students, to listen to thought-leaders discuss timely topics that affect user research practices.

Outcome

5 conferences, 75+ speakers, 1000+ attendees.

RRS2016%252Bhomepage%252Bsmall.jpg

2016

RRS2017%2Bhomepage%2Bsmall.jpg

2017

RRS2018%2Bhomepage%2Bsmall.jpg

2018

RRS2019+homepage+small.jpg

2019

“Many thanks to all the organizers, speakers, and participants of last week's #RadResearch Summit. Judging by these smiles... the @MicrosoftRI team had a pretty awesome experience!” Microsoft Customer Insights Research

“Thanks @radresearchvan for a truly great day spent with some of the best researchers in industry” Lynsey Thornton, VP UX, Shopify

My role

  • 2016: Organizer, MC

  • 2017: Program committee co-chair

  • 2018: Chair of organizing team

  • 2019: Chair of organizing team

  • 2021: Organizing team member, panel moderator

My key tasks

  • Organize: Recruit volunteers, form teams, find venue, get talk proposals, review proposals, select talks, run bi-weekly update meetings

  • Run: Help support speakers and volunteers

  • Assess: Get feedback from volunteers and attendees, run post-mortem

  • Improve: roles and responsibilities documentation, communication between teams, project management

Reflection

I’m very proud of what our team was able to achieve to serve UX researchers in Vancouver, Seattle and beyond. Offering others a day of inspiring talks and opportunities to connect to like-minded professionals made all the work worth it. Further, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to stretch and strengthen my organizing and leadership skills. RRS is definitely a highlight of my career.