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"How many UX designers does it take to fix social issues? The answer, according to UX for Good, a one-weekend design and think-fest for social good based in Chicago, is hopefully around \"50.\"\nUX for Good is a two-day design competition featuring 40 UX designers, 10 visual designers and a team full of volunteers. The participants will be divided into five teams to try to come up with solutions for five pressing and systemic social issues: unemployment, urban violence, public education, community mental health and cross-cultural understanding.\nIn the spirit of social good, there's no cash payout or trophy; instead, the teams of designers will be competing to solve their issues with the help of non-profit experts in their specific fields. These teams will be mixed with volunteering poets, architects and writers to help spur creativity. At the end of the conference, the teams will present their solutions to a panel of peers.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe Adler School, which is hosting UX for Good\n\nThe idea is not to create a website or code a seamless graphic, but to use the skill sets of a UX designer to analyze social issues. \"They're really good systems designers, I don't know if they knew that,\" says Jeff Leitner, the founder and dean of Insight Labs and, along with Manifest Digital's Jason Ulaszek, one half of the brains behind the event.\nUX for Good was born from a late night conversation between Leitner and Ulaszek. Without much of a model for how to do it, they put out a call to UX designers that wanted to take their skills at streamlining digital systems to the non-profit world. UX for Good attracted a glut of designers from places like Groupon, Sears and Cannon, and started wracking up sponsors.  \nBut why UX designers? Wouldn't something like this be best served by non-profit thought leaders? Not so, Leitner says. UX designers are uniquely positioned as gatekeepers of the technological world and its human end user: They make technology make sense for people. \"I think we stand at an interesting time when technology is so pervasive and solutions that take into account both humanity and technology are where the answers lie,\" Leitner says. \"And UX was designed to solve for that... it is the center of the venn diagram between technology and people.\"\n\n\n\n\nAs much as the event is intended to solve major social issues by applying a streamlined, focused mindset, Leitner hopes that UX for Good will introduce UX designers as a major asset to social good campaigns. \"It's an introduction to the market place, or the zeitgeist, this group of people who are not being tapped to solve challenges,\" he says. \nLeitner has received some pushback from designers claiming the mandate is well above their station, but an overwhelming majority has been game to try.\nLeitner was adamant that UX for Good is not just an academic exercise but a way of blowing open a whole new perspective on social good and motivating a new field of professionals to get involved. \"You go to [a conference] and you sit in the dark and listen to really smart people and you talk in the breaks,\" Leitner says. \"And what we're doing is taking a bunch of smart people and saying, 'Now do something.'\"\nIf you're interested in participating or getting involved the conference is planning a robust social media rollout including five live bloggers and live streams, also available on its Facebook Page."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/01/27/ux-for-good/>