Community · Outside of work
DesignWalks Toronto
Walk. Talk. Connect. A monthly walking community for UXers, built outside office hours out of love for the craft and the people who practice it. We took the hallway conversation, the one that usually happens in the margins, and made it the main event.
Monthly episodes since August 2024.
UXers per walk, kept intentionally small.
Consecutive months, zero cancelled walks. Summer heat, October rain, December frost.
The situation
Toronto's design community is rich, but how we connect keeps getting in the way. So much of how we meet happens in constrained formats: conference panels, LinkedIn posts, Zoom calls where everyone is a little guarded. The conversations that actually matter tend to happen in the margins.
We wanted to make those conversations the main event. Not networking, connection. Not showcasing portfolios, sharing real experiences.
The only participation cost is knowledge to share.
What we wanted to create
- Movement as a social lubricant: walking side by side loosens people up.
- Real honesty, not polished LinkedIn narratives.
- Intentionally small, around 20 people, so everyone gets heard.
- Zero barrier to entry: no tickets, no sponsors, no agenda beyond the theme.
What the community was getting
- Panel discussions: one voice at a time, from a stage.
- LinkedIn networking: performative and guarded.
- Zoom calls: everyone a little too polished.
- Big conferences: the margin conversations lost in the noise.
Side by side
Not across a table
When you are walking beside someone instead of facing them, something shifts. People talk differently. More honestly.
~20 people
Kept intentionally small
Not a meetup, a gathering. Small enough that every voice gets heard, not just the loudest ones.
Themed talks
No slides, no panels
Career transitions, burnout, failures worth talking about. Just walking, talking, and the kind of honesty that is hard to find.
The origin
It started with a good summer day and a better conversation. In the summer of 2024, Arjit Singh and I had just come off an energizing Design Next Toronto event, the kind that reminds you why you got into this work in the first place. We were still buzzing when a simple question surfaced: what is stopping us from creating something of our own?
The answer, we quickly realized, was nothing. So we did not wait. The first walk went out in August 2024. Two co-founders, then twelve months in a row with no breaks.
Each episode has a theme. Everything else the community brings.
No slides. No panels. Just walking, talking, and honesty. Career transitions, burnout and recovery, failures worth talking about. The theme sets the stage, but the community brings the rest.
This isn't about pitching services or hunting for jobs. It's about building a compassionate creative community where we can be honest about where we are, where we want to be, and how we actually get there.
Christopher Miller, Co-founder, DesignWalks Toronto
The format
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A theme is set
Passion projects, career shifts, things we don't usually say out loud. The theme gives people permission to go there.
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We walk
Through parks, galleries, neighbourhoods. Movement isn't the backdrop, it's the mechanism that makes the conversation possible.
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We stop somewhere good
A coffee shop, a gallery, a bench in the park. The walk ends, but the conversation doesn't have to.
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We do it again next month
Same commitment. Different theme. The community grows, and so does the trust.
Memorable episodes
October · Trinity Bellwoods
Passion Projects
Our most memorable episode. We asked what everyone was actually working on, and everyone had something to share. We walked the park, stopped at Pilot Coffee on Ossington, kept talking, and walked back. One of those days you don't want to end.
AGO · Art Gallery of Ontario
Observe & Draw
Participants brought sketchbooks. We moved through the gallery together, drawing, looking, noticing. A reminder to slow down and really see, and an episode that reconnected people with their hands.
December · Distillery District
Winter Walk
Freezing cold, Christmas Market in full swing. We showed up anyway, and so did our community. There is something meaningful about a group that won't be stopped by the weather.
We just kept showing up.
Twelve consecutive months. Summer heat, October rain, December frost. The community showed up because we showed up first. Trust is built in the repetition.
Months straight.
Cancelled walks.
Reflections
Designing experiences for a community is different from designing products. You can't prototype your way to trust. You have to show up, consistently, and create conditions where people feel safe enough to be real with each other.
The October walk was the clearest proof. We gave people a theme and a question, and they brought the rest: stories about passion projects shelved during the pandemic, designs started on napkins, ideas that still won't let go.
That conversation happened because we created the space for it, but it was entirely theirs.
On community design
Trust isn't a feature you ship. It's what accumulates when you show up every month for a year straight, weather be damned. Consistency is the design decision.
On format as mechanism
The walk isn't decoration. The movement, the side-by-side proximity, the absence of a screen: these are active ingredients. The format is the product.
On small being enough
Twenty people sounds small. It is. That's the point. The right size for real conversation, not a crowd, a gathering.
What people take from it
Connection
Real relationships with other designers, not follower counts. The kind you can text when you're struggling with a job search or a creative block.
Honesty
Space to say what you're actually dealing with, not what you'd post on LinkedIn. Career doubts. Creative frustrations. The real stuff.
Belonging
The design community they wanted but couldn't quite find. A group with no agenda except to show up and keep walking.
Where it stands
DesignWalks is ongoing, free, and open to any UXer in Toronto. We run one episode a month. And it has started to travel: Jacki Torres, founder of UX Chats in San Francisco, has launched her own DesignWalk using the same model. City by city, the format is proving it moves without losing what made it work in the first place.