Topics

 

Topics we’ll be discussing, learning and debating

Every talk, pre-conference course, panel, poster and keynote fit one of the 6 topics:

  • Career development and management
  • Design psychology
  • Innovation and emerging technology
  • Interaction and visual design
  • Tools and techniques
  • UX strategy

 

The descriptions below give a flavour of the kind of content you can expect during the conference. Our full program will be announced in January.

Career Development and Management

Whether you’re thinking about your next career move or planning to continue growing at your current organization, it can be important to consider your goals and the steps you can take to get there. This track is all about developing as UXers, and navigating the challenges of UX management. Some key topics include how to develop soft and hard skills, deciding between moving into management or practicing UX and understanding the types of organizations you’ll perform best in.

 

Design Psychology

How do you use knowledge of psychology and human factors to create usable, desirable experiences? We’ll cover the application of techniques rooted in behavioural, social, cognitive psychology and human factors. Explore psychologically-driven solutions for learnability, efficiency, error prevention, and satisfaction and dive into design for people with a broad range of physical and cognitive abilities.

 

Innovation and Emerging Technologies

What is the latest and greatest technology you can be using to offer experiences beyond the desktop? Learn how others are taking advantage of the exciting benefits that come with augmented and virtual reality (AR & VR), Internet of things (IOT), and artificial intelligence (AI). We’ll also explore the best design practices from those researching, designing and building new technologies. If you want to learn how to build a Voice User Interface (VUI) or design the next great chat bot, this is the track for you.

 

Interaction and Visual Design

We’ll explore practical case studies and best practices for creating design systems and strategies, responsive vs adaptive UI, design sprints in agile environments and design tools to improve your productivity, collaboration, and efficiency. Look to answer big questions like: how has the role of visual, or interaction designer evolved in the rapidly changing field of digital product design? What are the new set of concerns and challenges that designers face every day?

 

Tools and Techniques

If you’re looking for tools to be more productive, save time or money, communicate better, move a project along, or simplify a process this track explores them all. With such a wide variety of techniques available to UXers, we’ll explore and debate the merits of research, design, development and evaluation tools. Whether you’re looking to learn about a new prototyping application, understand how to evaluate the merits of different design ideas or explore the benefits of  conducting a contextual inquiry this track has you covered.

 

UX Strategy

Many claim the next step in the evolution of UX is becoming more strategic. How can we get UX practitioners more involved in the bigger decisions and longer-term direction of a business? How can we simplify our own processes and bring greater efficacy and efficiency to our UX work? We’ll be exploring reporting on the return on investment, getting access to the Director level and how UX strategy sits amongst all the other strategies.