Reimagining DesignChats

How it started

I started DesignChats in 2015 as an attempt to connect with the other experience designers in my local community of Kitchener-Waterloo (KW). I was new to design, and finding my feet in the startup space. KW is a well-established and strong engineering feeder for major tech-companies, and a source for many of Canada’s most successful startups. Back in 2015 it was clear engineering was the dominant skill set in the tech scene, and I was keen on bringing design up to the fore-front.

In a small greasy diner at the corner of King and Water streets, I shared breakfast with the only other experience designers I knew at the time, Riley Donelson and Kevin Lee; Kevin was my design partner at Chalk at the time, and Riley was kicking off his own startup Pout in the Velocity Garage where I had recently started and and terminated one of my own.

Over oil soaked home fries, soupy eggs and bland toast we discovered we were all longing for more connection to others in our field, feeling drowned out by the volume of engineering in the area, but we didn’t know where to begin. Collectively we knew one or two other designers, and decided we’d invite them to another breakfast meetup where we’d simply eat, and shoot the proverbial ‘shit’. As network effects typically go, within a few weeks we were a collection of 20+ creatives crowded around a table at a breakfast joint sharing tales of our experiences designing in the Waterloo tech-scene.

Up until this point there had been a couple of community meetups, one quoted as lecture-y, and the other, focused around beer was infrequent and hard to maintain connection between events. There was an obvious gap, and we surely couldn’t sustain growth crowding the scarce breakfast joints in this soon-to-bloom tech town. So the group took the next step from the debut name of Designer Breakfast to Design Chats as we spun up a Slack group, and continued our breakfast conversations, support, and designer therapy sessions online.

I’ll spare you the details, but I was blown away by the creative community hiding in the shadows in Kitchener-Waterloo, and in particular the experience design community that felt non-existent. What it revealed to me was that there was a growing network of young designers, mixed with a limited pool of veterans, and in many cases designers were working alone, or on teams of two at small startups, with a few select companies entertaining larger teams. DesignChats became a support network for those without the resources at work to bounce ideas off, or ask questions of.

Fast forward a few more years and I came to the realization event organization was not my forte, and breakfasts were beginning to showcase a high turnover, but the topic of discussion remained stale and repetitive (from my perspective as I was there every week). I tired out and hit a point where I’d only remember an event was booked if my calendar alerted me en route to the office in the morning. I needed to take a break.

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How it’s going

Eventually Design Chats simmered out to passive conversation on Slack, still incredibly valuable, but eventually became overshadowed by the global communities starting to appear on Slack that featured thousands and thousands, and seemingly froze the Slack app on launch. I had always intended to keep the group local and small so it was valuable and intimate, so I let the group drift off, and focused more on one to one network, mentorship and honing my own design skills.

Routinely now I reflect on what is next for the Design Chats umbrella. Community is still a passion of mine, helping the next generation learn from mistakes made, and get a foot in the door.

In April 2020, in the midst of the pandemic I started a wildly unexpected role, one I never would have pictured myself in, creating content, training corporate design teams and speaking in community events as a subject matter expert for Adobe XD. Since then I’ve spoken at over 50 events, trained 30+ design teams around the world on Adobe XD, and I’ve written so much content I cannot recall what came from my pen anymore. I absolutely love it. It gives me an energy I never could have expected, and this introverted shy guy absolutely loves presenting at community events. I’ve learned my strength may not be in organizing, but I have many experiences, mistakes and learnings to share with the next generation (and an absurd amount of tips and tricks on leveraging Adobe XD in real-world design workflows).

Which brings me to today. I sit here writing this draft, reflecting back on highschool english classes where a 70% grade marked the peak of my writing performance, though i’m eager to share more of my experiences through writing, video and other mediums. The future of DesignChats is content; guides, interviews, how-to’s and more. If you’re looking to get started in design, switching careers into UX, or just want to follow along, I’d love to hear what you’re interested in learning more about (leave a comment below).

I have a backlog of ideas I want to share. They may not be perfectly polished, but I hope that they can help you grow and develop your own design career, ask tough questions, and challenge your ideas of what design is. Think of them as casual Design Chats.