It is no doubt that Pakistan is home to a plethora of talented designers and artists that have fantastic aesthetics and remarkable ideas. However, due to the lack of opportunities, these brilliant creative minds are not able to come to their full potential.
There is an ever growing need to nurture and guide the emerging talent under the wing of those with more knowledge and experience. There is an ever growing need to build a community that bridges the gap between thinkers, creators, and users; in the case of designers, through human-centered design principles.
Therefore, Lahore University of Management Sciences is all set to organize the UX Pakistan Design Conference to provide attendees with a holistic experience of the design world, teaching the latest in UX (User Experience) trends and technologies, and how to create seamless digital and non-digital experiences during a day filled with interesting workshops in interaction design, AR/VR, design hackathons and competitions, and informative talks with a stellar line-up of industry and design leaders and professionals.
The roots for the conference were established in 2017 and it serves as a platform for start-ups and UX designers to present their ideas and be evaluated by professionals. The last two conferences saw to 28 speakers, 11 hands-on workshops. The response to the conference has always been overwhelming, and they expect 2019 to be bigger and better.
Commenting on the UX Design conference 2019, the President of INDEX (The Design Society at LUMS), Numra Azhar (Student @LUMS) said, “The goal of UX Pakistan is to innovate and bring awareness about the importance of ‘good design’ by bringing in people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines to one platform. This event has opened a way for user experience design professionals to interact with beginners especially early career professionals and students. I, being from a biology background have excelled in this field, establishing the fact that everyone can learn how to be a good designer.”
Furthermore, at the UX Pakistan Design Conference participants will get a chance to showcase their talent and work through the UX Pakistan Design Challenge and Design Awards. Participants can also apply with their start-ups for the UX Pakistan Design Showcase. The speakers attending this year’s conference will share stories about their own journeys and projects, as well as what led them to come up with their ideas.
Keynote speakers for this year’s conference include Abbas Saleem Khan, CEO of Optera Digita, Asif Baki, Head of Research & Insights, Next Billion Users at Google, Usman Riaz, Founder of Mano Animation Studio, TED Senior Fellow, Burgan Shealy, who also is the Interaction Designer at Google, Shahzad Nawaz ( Chief Creative Officer and Advisor to CEO at AAP Media), Garen Checkley, Emerging Market Design Strategy at Google. I
The event will also feature Sadia Khurram, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Jazz, Benedict Davies, UX Designer at Google, Suleman Shahid, Founder UX Pakistan, who is also an Assistant Professor at LUMS, along with Sadaan Ahmad, Founder/CEO at Vanilla Arcade, Jaffer Hussain, Founder at Offroad Studios, Creative Consultant at CricinGif and Design Educator at VCD-BNU.
Overal, the agenda for this year’s conference is to put the spotlight on innovative designs and to turn these into real-life services and products that solve real-world problems.
The founder of INDEX and UX Pakistan, Dr. Suleman Shahid, Assistant Professor at LUMS, speaking about the conference said, “Modern complex problems cannot be solved by a single discipline. We need a multidisciplinary approach for understanding and solving these problems and design, as a process and action, can help a lot in solving those wicked problems out there.To spread design in its true essence in Pakistan, we need a grassroots movement starting from schools and going all the way up to businesses and the government. Events like UXPAKISTAN and UXCAMPS, which try to bring modern creatives (designers, business leaders, technologists, craftsmen, architect, and artists) on one platform for spreading the real value of design, are just a starting point.”
Moreover, LUMS is also hosting the first Google Home Developers Summit for the first time in Pakistan. For the summit, a team from Google will come to speak on Home Automation.
Speakers for the summit will consist of Faisal Feroz, Director Partner Engineering at Google; Ryo Ga, APAC Head of Technical Account Management at Google; Sean Cho, Head of Technical Account Management at Google; John Fieg, Head of the Home Automation Division at Google; Kevin Nilson, Head of the Technical Solutions Engineering at Google; and John Fieg, Head of the Home Automation Division at Google.
