LINKS OR BLURBS

UNIQUEWAYS podcast

UNIQUEWAYS WITH THOMAS GIRARD emerges with people from all walks of life, who through their own unique angle, succeed and flourish. Enjoy the ride, and welcome to UNIQUEWAYS! An audio podcast.

UX Now framework

In an age dominated by high-speed digital tools, UX Now offers a deliberate return to tactile, analog methods in user experience training. Spanning five weeks, this immersive program cultivates foundational UX skills through accessible, iterative processes that emphasize empathy, storytelling, and audience-centered design. Beginning with idea generation through affinity diagramming and progressing through wireframing, paper prototyping, user testing, and high-fidelity deliverables, participants explore both divergent and convergent thinking. Each session is structured into four parts: a collaborative “Head Dump” for cross-pollination of ideas, a topic-focused presentation, guided in-class workshop time, and rigorous peer critique. Core tools include sticky notes, index cards, pens, Figma, Adobe CC, and Google Slides—used not to replace, but to extend, the power of analog ideation. Rooted in frameworks like Value Proposition Design and The Design of Everyday Things, UX Now equips learners with an entrepreneurial mindset—preparing them to prototype not only interfaces, but value. This talk explores how UX pedagogy can adapt to a world in flux by grounding innovation in the physical and the personal.

Son of Greg Girard

“We arrived at a strange hour at Phnom Penh airport and used the Visa on Arrival option, where a raggedy man in a makeshift booth rubber stamped our Canadian passports after a short flight. It was late and my dad recalls trying to check into a hotel room that had only one bed, which I refused, after which we tuk tuked around in the middle of the night if I remember correctly trying to find a hotel. I remember the first hotel that I refused – dimly lit but squinting you would see grande architecture from another time, large open hallways and a minimal discreet panel of hotel staff that looked a bit off in trying to get hotel staff at least from a young Canadian perspective in my mind. That would have been in the late 90s, early 2000s. I didn’t know my dad well yet but this is one of our memories. Early trips to China, and Hong Kong, really shaping things for me because I didn’t have anything like that on my radar during my formative years. Subsequent trips by my dads or my own volition, always with my dad there on arrival sometimes briefly sometimes longer. The long memorable trip in the South of China with my dad there, and actually no memory of a camera as his guide, maybe one the only times. Guangzhuo, after being asked, i described as a boring random Chinese city, mainland, dirty at the time, not much going on. Upon sharing this story with others familiar with the place, discovered it had a blossoming night life scene among locals and settlers. Not to downplay the phone call from Jonathan, part of a family friend group that was really the backbone for a lot of this. Jonathan as the story goes arrived in Hong Kong and adapted to have almost perfect Mandarin Chinese. Began writing for major art world publications and eventually joined Art Basel as a sort of gatekeeper for new artists in that space.”
