Conference

UX Fest

The three-day conference is centered squarely around interaction and product design, so is perfect for designers of all levels. There will be talks on everything from user research and product strategy through to UX writing, multi-variant testing and growth design. Spread over three afternoons (or mornings if you’re in the US), it’ll be a combination of over a dozen short talks, live Q&As, and panel discussions.

Digital by design

Talks and Q&As will be recorded and available for you to watch in your own time. To ensure content is as accessible as possible we will have live transcriptions during the event and pre-recorded content will be captioned.

The timings of the sessions are shown in BST (UK time). Please note the schedule is subject to changes as we finalise the line-up.

Day Two – Designing for Everybody

Day two of the UX Fest Conference puts inclusivity and accessibility front and centre. Learn about the harmful biases that cause users to make bad decisions and how to prevent our own blind spots from hurting those who use our product.

Introduction & Welcome from Jeremy

A few words from our UX Fest host on the day ahead.

Jeremy Keith   Founder, Clearleft

You're Already a Researcher

Research is everyone’s job in a customer-oriented organization. And whether or not you have a research team, you already have the skills—and likely the information—you need to make better decisions.

When everyone has access to and shares useful, insightful information, wonderful things happen: we align our organizations and teams toward common goals, and we design great experiences for users.

Based on his experiences building research practices for Mailchimp and Vox Media, Gregg Bernstein, lead user researcher at Webflow and author of "Research Practice," talks about how to find the information you need to make informed decisions, build data-sharing relationships that help your entire organization, and put it all together in service of your users.

Gregg Bernstein   Research Lead, Author of Research Practice, Webflow

Q&A with Gregg Bernstein

Jeremy will take your questions for Gregg.

Gregg Bernstein   Research Lead, Author of Research Practice, Webflow
Jeremy Keith   Founder, Clearleft

Time for a break

Time for a break from sitting down. Take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.

Design for Cognitive Bias: Using Mental Shortcuts for Good Instead of Evil

Users' minds take shortcuts to get through the day. Usually they’re harmless. Even helpful. But what happens when they’re not? In this talk I’ll use real-world examples to identify some particularly harmful biases that frequently lead users to make bad decisions. I'll then talk about some content strategy and design choices we can use in our apps, designs, and platforms to redirect or eliminate the impact of those biases. Finally, I'll explore our own biases as designers and some methods to prevent our own blind spots from hurting users.

David Dylan Thomas   Founder, CEO, David Dylan Thomas, LLC

How We Get Wicked Good

Did you ever wonder why so much of our work seems harder than it should be? Does it feel like you are constantly working at altitude, trying to do more work with less oxygen? Well, Karen's first job in tech was in 1993. That's almost 30 years across different roles and companies, all in technology and digital products. And no matter how much more skilled we all get, things just seem to be getting harder. How do we move from barely surviving to thriving in our work?

In this talk, we'll discuss how we get wicked good, moving from competency and mastery to sustainability, even in environments that seem to be set up for failure and eventual burnout. We'll explore how to make our work spaces kinder, more inclusive, and more supportive of long term engagement and growth while at the same time encouraging us to be more thoughtful and intentional about the design decisions and career choices we make.

Karen VanHouten   Principal Consultant, Open Systems Technologies, Inc

Q&A with David Dylan Thomas and Karen VanHouten

Jeremy will take your questions for David and Karen.

David Dylan Thomas   Founder, CEO, David Dylan Thomas, LLC
Jeremy Keith   Founder, Clearleft
Karen VanHouten   Principal Consultant, Open Systems Technologies, Inc

Time for a break

Time for a break from sitting down. Take a walk if you can, and grab a drink (hot, cold, long or short). We'll be back in 30 minutes.

Designing Backwards: The Raptors Are Loose: Design, Outcomes, and Unintended Consequences

The world has been jarred awake by tech gone wrong. We are realizing that the effects of our most celebrated products are not always positive – and that for every advancement, there is a potential unintended impact. Asking whether we should is just as important as asking whether we could. We at Substantial have been creating methods in our practice for having those hard conversations and connecting them to our work. The way to do this is to surface the outcomes – both the ones you want to happen, and the ones you want to avoid – during the creative process.

Sheryl Cababa   VP of Strategy, Substantial

Q&A with Sheryl Cababa

Jeremy will take your questions for Sheryl.

Sheryl Cababa   VP of Strategy, Substantial

Outro for Day Two

A few words from our host about tomorrow and the rest of The Conference.

Jeremy Keith   Founder, Clearleft

Tickets

We have a range of passes available to suit every schedule. All the conference and festival content will be available on-demand for three months after the event.