UX for Good – Chicago, IL (2011)

As UX for Good founders Jeff Leitner and Jason Ulaszek prepared our first event, they carefully considered what physical environment might best stimulate the creativity of the user experience designers who were coming from around the world. “We needed an amazing place to have this event,” said Trung Le, principal at Cannon Design, a UX for [...]

One of the social challenges tackled at UX4Good was the reinvention of the American high school. The group that considered the challenge collaborated with education design initiative The Third Teacher to imagine how school works (or, just as often, doesn’t work) from the point of view of students. Now one of our UX4Good alumni has [...]

The public image of entrepreneurship is pretty shiny. We imagine smartly dressed young men and women drawing things on white boards, making pitches to venture capitalists, ringing the bell at Wall Street following their initial public offering. But of course real entrepreneurship is nothing like that. Starting a business or other enterprise not only requires [...]

Like any well-intentioned effort, UX for Good has stirred up a few critics. A couple have spoken out publicly; a couple of others have posted critiques under pseudonyms. UXXU 2011 designer Cia Romano takes on one of those critics, point-by-point. “I would offer that this change of perspective is exactly what the ‘idealists’ at UX for [...]

Carlo Garcia is an intriguing guy. In his words: “My name is Carlo and my mission is to give to charity every day for a year. This mission is built on a belief that you don’t have to be rich in dollars to make a difference, you only need to be rich in spirit. I [...]

“It’s a busy day here at The Adler School Chicago campus as we continue hosting the two-day UX for Good–an unprecedented effort bringing together 40 top UX designers, 10 visual designers, leaders from the nonprofit world, and a team of eager volunteers to reimagine the way we meet social challenges. “Among the five challenges UX teams [...]

Ed Chen – a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago – gives us a look inside one of the teams with only 24 hours to make sense of an impossible challenge. “I felt that quite often, 7 or 8 of the 9 agreed on a direction and wanted to move [...]

“All the presentations were well done, but one really stuck with me: unemployment. The unemployment team tackled the misperceptions that exist for a local magazine called Streetwise. Vendors for Streetwise are usually homeless and are looking to get their lives back together and selling Streetwise is their job. I see these vendors on the corners [...]

“Chicago is an awesome town and, importantly, it’s not San Francisco! I believe the dedicated technorati of SF need to branch out from the Valley and learn from practitioners elsewhere. This seemed like a perfect occasion for that very thing, even more so than an Interaction’11 or IA Summit (both of which I’m bummed to be [...]

“From my opinion the Cease Fire group did a really fabulous job identifying what ways the average person can help cub violence, what type of resources are needed to facilitate the great work Cease fire organization is currently doing and what other services the community needs to help address the problem long-term. I will definitely [...]