Design Thinkers Conference 2015

On November 12 & 13th, Akendi participated in RGD‘s 16th annual Design Thinkers Conference, the largest Conference for Visual Design in Canada. Held at The Sony Centre for Performing Arts in Toronto, Akendi team mates from both our Toronto and Ottawa offices were there listening to inspirational talks, attending events, and networking with fellow designers, vendors and clients.

Akendi is a Community Partner of RGD and we were thrilled to not only attend, but for the first time, be a part of this year’s conference. We had our booth set up in the main lobby where we enjoyed having great conversations about our UX training, UX research and design services with a wide range of attendees.

In preparation for the conference, our Visual Design team created new collateral to promote our UX training courses and fun giveaways for conference swag bags and the Akendi booth. Attendees who stopped by our booth bright and early got to enjoy a special treat with us while chatting about UX. We thought the best way to start off the Design Thinkers experience would be a healthy, energy boosting, cold pressed juice from our friends at Village Juicery. Apparently, we were right on target!

Tweet from Olson Canada. Thanks for sharing!

Although we enjoyed designing the giveaways for the booth, the real reason we were at Design Thinkers was to learn and be inspired. Our team saw a wide range of thought provoking talks from world class designers, industry leaders, and innovators. We learned about everything from different creative processes, design management strategy and even the intersection of experience design, art and food. Overall, we were impressed by the diversity of topics and were thrilled to see an increasing number of UX and accessibility related talks this year and hope this trend continues for Design Thinkers 2016!

Emilie Baltz speaking about her work which lies at the intersection of art, food and experience design

Some of our Favourite Talks this Year Included

Beauty and Magic, by James Victore

Magical UX and the Internet of Things, by Josh Clark

Shelf Appeal: How Design is Helping Put Classics in the Hands of Readers, by Coralie Bickford-Smith

You Are How You Eat, by Emilie Baltz

Strategies for Making Accessibility a Core Part of the Web Design Process by Adam Antoszek-Rallo

Brute Force: Prototypes, Not Presentations by Felipe Memoria

All in all it was another great year at Design Thinkers! Were you at this years conference? What was your favourite talk?