The journey to build a UX community (Day6)
In 2019 June, I moved to Tokyo for my new job as a UX designer/researcher at GLOBIS. ✈️✈️
Very exciting but daunting. Everything started from zero, no friend, no family, just me and a suitcase.
I am a heavy user of Meetup.com, so without hesitation I looked up for UX events then I found one, Tokyo UX meetup.
The very 1st event
It was in a cozy cafe near Shibuya. I met the events host, Max and Tosh. They said this is the very first event of the meetup group and they liked to know what kind of activities they can do.
Most UX meetups are Japanese ONLY
In our discussion, we realised that the majority of UX meetups in Tokyo is for Japanese speakers only. Max is a young guy from Australia, and Tosh is a Japanese but spent most of her 20s in U.S. Not to mention, I was just a one-month newbie resident in Tokyo.
Then, the journey to build a UX community for foreigners in Tokyo started here on 2019 July 5th. 💎
UX is about making hands dirty
Before I moved to Tokyo, I was holding various kinds of UX events in Taipei. From seminars, one-on-one mentorship, to a special UX research crowdsourcing program, called UX MilkTea.
For those who want to practice user research and build their own portfolio, this program provides research projects from startups. In 2 weeks time, participants did research, uploaded data and analyzed together, in the end, submitted a report.
By the way, it was all done ONLINE.
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Nowadays, it is too easy to find knowledge we need, same for UX learning. However, what we cannot get easily is the opportunity to put knowledge into action.
Instead of holding seminars, we believe workshops is more helpful and beneficial for members to practice UX skills.
User journey map workshop
We kicked off the first workshop in Sep 2019 and we designed a worksheet to analyse the user journey of Meetup.com.
We were really happy to see a variety of participants, we had a UX researcher of automated driving system from the State, a university professor from Singapore, a web engineer from Japan, and a UX intern from Denmark...
Connect Japanese with foreigners
There are some Japanese members highly motivated in learning UX with English. Therefore, we decided to hold workshops in both Japanese and English language. Plus, an after-workshop lunch gathering at the beautiful Hibiya library cafe.
Usability testing workshop
In this workshop, participants brought their own projects to test each other.
We had a plan to make the testing workshop a regular event where designers/ researchers gain the opportunities to
1. practice how to run a usability test
2. test design assumptions for their projects or portfolios
Be a teacher - UX study group
We also have a bi-weekly event for members to study UX materials at their own choices for about 1 hr, then teach others whatever knowledge they learned for about 5 min and answer questions from others.
This is a nice event for people who
1. are too busy to study UX
2. have difficulty concentrating at home
3. have personal UX projects to work on and need feedback
4. want to meet other like minded people in Tokyo
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Looking back 2019, I feel nothing but gratitude. Touched by the strong motivation of learning from our members. Looking forward, I am asking myself, are there new values this meetup can offer?
Move to the next stage
I would like to invite members to shape the community together.
In 2020, let's embrace values of:
- Collaboration
- Maker culture, "do-it ourselves"
- Sharing, "be a teacher"
To make this happen, we will invite members to an online meetup to brainstorm some crazy ideas.
What's more important, we are so bored locked ourselves at home due to the coronavirus.
So Please join us and let's have fun (ONLINE)
- Wednesday, April 15, 2020
- 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM GMT+9
- Sign up here👇👇👇👇