Calls closes 30 September22 days left21–22 Nov 2026LUMS, LahoreSubmit a proposal →
UXPakistan 2026یو ایکس پاکستان
About UX PakistanA record, not a brochure

An idea imagined together—and brought to life together.

ایک خیال جو مل کر دیکھا، اور مل کر حقیقت بنایا۔

In 2017, a research lab and a student design society at LUMS decided Pakistan should have a design conference, and then held one. Nine editions later, it is the country’s largest design and user experience conference, still nonprofit, still run mostly by people who are not being paid for it. This page is the account of how that works.

2017
First edition, LUMS — the first design conference of its kind in Pakistan
9
Editions held, plus a year of UX Camps in smaller cities
100+
Speakers hosted, from Pakistani studios to Google, Meta and Visa
3
Cities: Lahore, Karachi, Islamabad
How a nonprofit conference actually gets made
طریقہ

There is no permanent staff. Each edition is assembled from scratch by a committee that mostly graduates and hands over. What carries between years is not an organisation chart but a set of habits: open call, blind-ish review, students in the room, sponsors who fund but do not programme. The roles below are what a working edition needs. Most are filled by people doing them for the first time.

Programme
Reads every proposal

The open call is read by a committee, not a curator. A first-time speaker from a Multan university goes through the same review as a director from a global company.

Speaker liaison
Gets people to the stage

Travel, visas, rehearsals, nerves. Students end up spending two days beside the practitioners whose work they study.

Operations
Runs the two days

Registration, rooms, AV, chai, the workshop kit that has to be on the right table by nine. The least visible work and the most load-bearing.

Design and content
Makes the edition's identity

Each year gets its own visual language, made by students. It is a design conference; the artefact should be designed by the people it is for.

Partnerships
Keeps tickets affordable

Sponsorship exists so that a student ticket costs what a student can pay. Sponsors get visibility and recruitment access. They do not get the programme.

Documentation
Makes it outlast the weekend

Photography, video, notes. Most of the audience for any edition is the people who read about it afterwards.

Nine editions, in the order they happenedتاریخ

A short record. The ten-year history and its full impact numbers live on their own site — this is the summary a newcomer needs.

2017The first oneHeld at LUMS by INDEX, the university's design society. Pakistan's first conference dedicated to design and user experience.
2018It came backThe second edition established that this was an annual event rather than a one-off, and that industry would turn up for it.
2019Workshops matterHands-on sessions moved from a side activity to half the point, and the two-day shape the conference still uses took hold.
2020The year of the screenCovid moved everything online. It cost the corridors and the chai, and it gained an audience that could not have travelled.
2021Five years inA halfway marker. By this point the conference had a community that predated any given committee.
2022UX Camps insteadNo main conference. A series of UX Camps ran in smaller cities under the UX Pakistan umbrella — going to the audience rather than asking it to travel.
2024Karachi, and a merged yearThe 2023 and 2024 editions were combined, and the conference left Lahore for its first Karachi edition.
2025Back at LUMSThe ninth edition returned to the founding campus, at the largest scale the conference has run.
2026The tenth edition21–22 November at LUMS, on the theme Refine Redefine Design. The call for speakers and workshops is open till 30 September.
Ten-year archive and impact →
What we hold to, and what we are not
اصول
We hold to
An open call, every year
Anyone can propose. The programme is assembled from what comes in, not from a list of names.
Students in the room, not at the back
Ticket pricing, volunteer roles and workshop seats are all set so that being a student is not a barrier.
Practice over posture
We ask for work people actually did. A talk about a project that partly failed is more useful than a trend report.
Handover as a habit
Committees turn over as students graduate. The conference is built to survive the loss of any individual, including its founders.
We are not
A place to buy a stage
Sponsorship does not include a speaking slot. Sponsors who want the stage are welcome to submit to the open call like everyone else.
A commercial conference
It is nonprofit and runs under Design for Pakistan. Money that comes in goes into the next edition.
A Lahore-only event
Karachi in 2024, Islamabad, and a year of camps in smaller cities. Where it happens is a decision, not a default.
A finished institution
Ten years is not long. Much of what the conference should be is still an open question, which is what the tenth edition's theme is about.
Who stands behind it
ادارے
Founded byThe Design Team at LUMS (CHISEL/INDEX)
Led byDr. Suleman Shahid & Hasan Habib
Runs underDesign for Pakistan
ModelNonprofit, volunteer-run
Home campusLUMS, DHA, Lahore

Design for Pakistan is the nonprofit initiative the conference sits inside. Its wider work applies design to public services, education, healthcare and sustainable development — which is also why the conference programme keeps drifting towards questions bigger than software.

The organising team, any recent edition
The committee that ran a recent edition. Most of them had never run a conference before.

There is no
membership.

You join by doing one of these. That is the whole mechanism, and it is how almost everyone currently involved got here.

آئیے، شامل ہوں

Propose a talk or workshopOpen till 30 September →Volunteer for the tenth editionEight roles →Sponsor and keep tickets lowFour tiers →Just come to the conferenceJoin the waitlist →