World Usability Day special: Tech for Good

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.