Join Gordon Ross and other panelists as they reflect on key insights from themes of the Civic Design 2022 three-day conference.
We’re pleased to announce that Gordon Ross joins the Insights Panel on day three of the Rosenfeld Media Civic Design 2022 conference. The virtual conference is November 16-18, 2022 and is for people who work in the intersection of design and the public sector. The event will explore one theme each day:
Day one: The Decade Cycle: 10 Years Back, 10 Years Forward
What have we learned from the last 10 years? And what do the next 10 look like? How do we continue to break down silos and institutionalize design?
Day two—Power Structures: Shifting How and By Whom Design Gets Done
How do civic designers navigate within their own organizations, communities, and field of practice to know when to employ the right methods? Where does design provide craft that is different from other types of expertise?
Day three—Physical Environments: Interactions Beyond Screens
We’ll examine the innovative strategies, tools, and technologies designers employ to pursue equitable, inclusive, and connected public spaces.
Gord and fellow panelists Sarah Auslander and George Aye, will discuss these themes with the presenters at the conference, reflecting on key insights that have emerged while posing critical questions to carry forward into the future.
Join Gord on November 18 for the virtual panel at Civic Design 2022. Use his discount code “ross-cd2022” for a $75 discount on a regular priced conference ticket.
Creative Director Wil Arndt, explores the concept of branding in the age of UX
OXD’s Creative Director Wil Arndt will present “Converge—Branding in the age of UX” at the 2022 Seattle Interactive conference.
Branding and identity can be frustratingly subjective. Wil shows how he and his team employed user experience methods—some established, some less traditional—to bring logic to a very emotional naming and rebranding process, whittle 3,839 potential names down to 1, and get everyone to agree and even love the result.
Anyone who works in strategy, branding, marketing, graphic design, research, user experience and all the possible overlaps of each will walk away with a tool kit of methods and approaches they can use to uncover insights, improve consensus, and harvest creative ideas from disparate groups.
Join Wil on Tuesday, October 25th as he explores branding in the age of UX.
The 2022 Seattle Interactive Conference (SIC) is for all creatives and marketers to come together to celebrate “diverse ideas at the intersection of creativity, commerce and culture”.
OXD worked with the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food to improve digital weather monitoring services for BC farmers.
The existing online Agricultural Irrigation Scheduling Calculator helps farmers plan when, how long, and how much to irrigate their crops. Many farmers find this desktop tool hard to use. Since the launch of the calculator, the Ministry has learned that farmers have varying and evolving needs for weathering monitoring tools.
Using service design methods, our User Experience team worked together with the Ministry to uncover opportunities to better serve the needs of BC farmers. The information collected was used to build a mobile prototype that farmers could use during virtual usability testing.
The interactive prototype incorporated feedback from the farmers, including simplified dashboards highlighting critical data, an easier-to-navigate layout, and more educational support resources.
Building a digital prototype informed by user-research gave the Ministry of Agriculture and Food a more accurate picture of farmers’ needs. In the future, an improved digital weather monitoring tool will make farming decisions easier for all BC farmers.
Join presenter Deborah MacKenzie, Senior UX Designer/Service Designer at OXD, and host Wil Arndt, Creative Director at OXD on Thursday, October 20 at 9 a.m. PST for our "Solving complex problems with mapping" webinar. Deb will walk us through solving the complex problem of creating a COVID-19 immunization plan for BC.
Over the course of this informative 45 minute session, you'll learn how we:
Achieved coherence and consensus across teams, and identified issues that required leadership decisions
Connected the journeys and needs of users to the functionality of an existing product
Identified gaps in the current service, and prioritized opportunities within an extremely limited timeframe
Who should attend our mapping webinar? People involved in program or product delivery who want to identify gaps in their delivery process and validate requirements through a more user-centred process.
Our Creative Director Wil Arndt has been invited to deliver “Extreme Makeover: Intranet Edition”, where he breaks down our intranet redesign process, as part of the IntraTeam series of networking webinars.
An internal design project can be a challenging task—particularly when you have an entire company of stakeholders to consider. Who needs to be consulted? How do you collect the right feedback? And—most challenging of all—how do you transform that feedback into tangible action?
Join Wil October 3, 2022 at 2:30 p.m. PST as he breaks down the redesign journey of the OXD and ThoughtFarmer shared intranet.
Key takeaways:
Simple design tips for internal landing pages
Why and how to use survey data
How to get employee input and feedback in the redesign process
How to get strategic with layout choices
Based in Denmark, IntraTeam supports the developing and optimizing of intranets, and the digitization of internal and external platforms.
In a pivotal step towards modernizing affordable housing, OPEN Technologies and OXD partnered to design the Affordable Housing Navigator tool, offering better functionality to meet the project planning needs of housing developers. The digital tool helps non-profit developers make informed choices for comfortable, high-performance, aand affordable homes by guiding them through sustainable and practical design options.
OPEN Technologies initially focused on adapting the tool for British Columbia and Ontario during its Proof of Concept phase. OXD later partnered with them to expand the tool's reach to developers across all of Canada. Our expertise in user experience helped define a clear minimum viable product (MVP) by refining the application's scope and identifying essential features and functionalities. Through mapping workshops, the OXD team outlined user journeys and key features necessary for both the MVP and future iterations of the application. This collaborative process led to the development of the MVP and the formulation of a user story backlog for ongoing and future enhancements.
The Affordable Housing Navigator tool empowers non-profit housing developers to identify cost-effective design strategies that meet the rigorous performance standards set by regulators and funders.
The user-centered research conducted by the OXD and OPEN Technologies team of experts equips non-profit housing developers with the knowledge and tools needed to better understand and achieve their affordability goals, ultimately leading to the approval and construction of more affordable housing in our communities.
In observance of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, September 30th, 2022 is a statutory holiday at OXD. This date coincides with Orange Shirt Day, commemorating Indigenous children forced to leave their families to attend residential schools.
We’re encouraging our staff and community to take time to recognize the tragedies incurred from residential schools, the missing children, and the survivors.
Ways to honour National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2022
The University of Alberta has a free online and self-guided 12-week Indigenous Canada course.
Use inclusive practices in your work.
Download the On-screen Protocols & Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Métis and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories from imagineNATIVE.
The Legacy of Hope Foundation is an Indigenous-led, charitable organization that has been supporting healing and reconciliation across Canada for over 19 years.
Our goal is to educate and raise awareness about the history and existing intergenerational impacts of the Residential School System (RSS) and subsequent Sixties Scoop (SS) on Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, and Métis) Survivors, their descendants, and their communities to promote healing and Reconciliation.”
Legacy of Hope Foundation
You can support them by donating or learning more about the Letters to Survivors program.
Kílala Lelum
Kílala Lelum (Urban Indigenous Health and Healing Cooperative) pairs Indigenous Elders in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community with allied health care professionals offering them the quality physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual care they may need. Learn how you can work with them, or donate towards their essential program needs.
If you, or anyone you know, is experiencing distress, pain, or anxiety as a result of their Residential school experience, please call the toll-free 24 hours a day, seven days a week Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-800-721-0066.
"To provide practical tools for accomplishing our visionary ends through socio economic programs and services that empowers self reliance; responsibility; success and prosperity, for all urban Aboriginal individuals, family and community."
VAFCS helps Aboriginal People making a transition to the urban community. Their support programs include health and welfare, social services, human rights, culture, education, and recreation, while promoting equality. If you need any assistance or to find out more about any of their services, you can visit their website or call 604-251-4844.
Join us
We invite you to join us by honouring and remembering all the lost children and survivors of Residential schools, their families, and their communities for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, 2022.
OXD helps clients determine the best cloud migration strategies, then tailors the approach based on their needs. Though we do use a general set of guidelines as a foundation for planning a cloud migration, which we've included in our free checklist.
This checklist is for project managers, product owners, or IT departments who have some understanding of cloud computing basics and are starting to think about migrating their existing applications to the cloud.
