Design & UX Events in Edinburgh

This month, we’re delighted to partner with the design team at Lloyds Banking Group to host the October edition of the UX Edinburgh meet-up at their historic headquarters ’The Mound’.

Join us for an evening where we’ll explore the future of design crafts. You’ll hear from designers working on the Scottish Widows customer experience to learn how they’re adopting new technologies in their ways of working as well as designing for agentic experiences before bringing our speakers back together for a panel discussion delving deeper into their respective design processes.

Important to know:

• Drinks and nibbles will be provided
• You’ll need to bring ID with you on the night
• The entrance to building is via North Bank Street (just up the hill from the Museum on the Mound)
• The event ends at 8.30pm, please leave promptly

Look forward to seeing you there!

We organise friendly informal networking events for people in Tech to share ideas, learn from each other, and make new connections.

Who are the events for?
People working in tech who want to connect with others in the Edinburgh tech community, including:

• Software engineers
• Product managers
• Data / AI professionals
• Startup founders & operators

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🍕 Action Required: get 20% off food & drinks 🍹

To attend, please become a member at OkGather.com for only £2.99 p/m (only takes 1 minute to join) and you will also get 20% off food & drinks at the gathering (show your OkGather profile at the bar). This small membership fee means we can keep running the gatherings, cover our costs and help more people meet new people! 🥳

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You’ll meet people who are:

• Working in software engineering, product, data, AI, or startups
• Building projects, products, or growing their careers in tech

Why should you join?

• Learn from others working in tech
• Expand your network to help your career
• It could lead to collaborations or new opportunities
• It’s a lot of fun!

✨ How it works
Secure your place and join a group of people working in and around tech.
Just arrive at the venue:

• Grab a drink, find the group, and settle in
• Ask the bar staff for the ****"****Edinburgh Tech Network" table booking
• Expect a friendly, welcoming group and a great atmosphere 👋

Have better conversations

• You’ll be surrounded by people interested in tech and building things
• Discussions are naturally more engaging and relevant 🤝

Build connections + opportunities

• Meet people you can stay in touch with
• Learn from others in the space
• Potentially collaborate on projects or opportunities ⚡

📍 Location
We host events at relaxed venues in central Edinburgh:

• Easy to get to locations
• Pubs or bars with a good atmosphere
• Spaces that are ideal for conversation 🍻

Spots are limited to keep the group high quality.

If you work in tech and want to meet others in your space, you’ll get a lot from this 👋

For our November meetup, we celebrate World Usability Day with a ‘tech for good’ theme, and are delighted to welcome two fantastic speakers who will share their experiences of starting and scaling products in this space.

James Buchan (Founder and CEO of ePass) will tell his story of going from CivTech challenge to national government infrastructure, and Tirtho Dasgupta (Founder, Nirmānaa) will share his experience of building an accessibility co-pilot in just 9 weeks.

Proceedings

• 5.15pm: Doors
• 5.45pm: From Challenge to Infrastructure: What It Really Takes to Design for Government (James Buchan)
• 6.30pm: Break
• 6.40pm: Designing Doubt: Can I Make This Journey? (Tirtho Dasgupta)
• 7.30pm: Close

From Challenge to Infrastructure: What It Really Takes to Design for Government (James Buchan)

Most government tech projects begin with a specification. ePass began with a problem: licensing in Scotland was slow, paper-heavy and different in every council and agency. CivTech asked for an outcome, not a solution. That one difference changed everything that followed.

In this talk, James Buchan, Founder and CEO of ePass, tells the story of going from a CivTech challenge to national government infrastructure. He’ll cover each stage, from concept to pilot to live services, and on to national adoption as a reusable common component.

User-centred design runs through the whole story. It isn’t a phase you finish. It’s what earns you the right to keep going. James will cover:

• Who the users are. In government you have more than one. You’re designing for citizens, businesses, licensing officers and policy teams all at once.
• Research in complex places. How to do discovery when every department works differently and the “as-is” process lives in people’s heads.
• Standards as a design tool. Why the Digital Scotland Service Standard and assessments push for better products, if you treat them that way.
• Designing for reuse. How to build a common component that 160+ licence types can configure, without it becoming hundreds of different products.
• What scale changes. How UCD practice has to adapt once you’re infrastructure and not a pilot.

You’ll leave with practical lessons on research, design and delivery that hold up in government, and an honest look at what goes wrong along the way.

Designing Doubt: Can I Make This Journey? (Tirtho Dasgupta)
In this talk, Tirtho will share his experience of building an accessibility co-pilot in just 9 weeks, solo. Through this journey, he'll explore how AI is changing the nature of design work, challenging designers to move beyond creating certainty and instead design for uncertainty itself.

Designing Doubt asks what “tech as good” really demands when the right answer is often “I’m not sure.”

About James
James Buchan is Founder and CEO of ePass, the Scottish GovTech company automating how governments handle licensing and permitting. ePass started as a CivTech challenge, a spinout from AI and software delivery company Zudu. It’s now a national common component, part of the Digital Strategy for Scotland and Programme for Government. James is a second-time founder with a background in data, product and digital transformation.

About Tirtho
Tirtho is a strategic design experience leader over two decades of experience in designing and delivering enterprise products and SaaS applications, now moving into AI native product experience.