A few years in the making, we are kicking off the OhioX User Experience Roundtable on August 12 at noon (on Zoom). Join us to help make Ohio a humane tech hub.
It started in 2019, when I learned about the plans for OhioX, a new organization representing and connecting those committed to growing Ohio’s economy through technology and innovation. I was wrapping up doing that in the Toledo area, but happy to have something at the state level appear.
When OhioX officially launched later in 2019, I saw the potential for User Experience professionals to participate in OhioX. I had been talking with people about the impact UX can have on economic development for a few years: with economic developers and with UX colleagues.
In March of 2020, I wrote User Experience for Economic Success and Social Impact for the OhioX blog, a sort of “manifesto” about how we as a state can invest in UX.
In Ohio, we should be investing more in defining, designing, and delivering innovative user experiences to grow our economy and to address social needs.
When Ohio Tech Day was announced in 2021, I wrangled a group of UX colleagues across the state to host a virtual Careers in UX session, so students could learn how UX jobs were also “tech jobs” that they can aspire to.
When the OhioX Product Roundtable wanted to talk about UX in January 2022, it was an easy collaboration. We covered UX at team, organization, and state levels. We talked about what can we do as communities of practice to elevate Ohio in terms of product management and user experience.
Our loose group of UX folks liked working together to both advance our UX goals and to be a part of the OhioX “platform”. We tested the waters again in April 2022 with a “booth” at the Ohio Tech Summit in Cleveland. It was fun to hang out with other UXers for the day (after many Zoom get-togethers). More important, we added value by spurring discussions about UX and design in the context of the AI, code training, talent recruiting, innovation, IoT, etc., agenda.
As we kept meeting as a group, we agreed to some basic goals to help us get started:
- Raise awareness of UX careers
- Improve UX capabilities in organizations
- Increase the professionalization of UX
And now we are ready to share our progress and get more UX leaders across Ohio involved. Join us on August 12th at noon to learn more, and hopefully, volunteer!
