Earlier this month, one of our senior consultants, Geoff, made his way to the Design Museum in London for The UX Conference (http://theuxconf.com/). His attendance at this aptly named event emphasises the unity of development and design whilst adding to the team’s ever-expanding pool of knowledge.

The theme of the conference was “Bringing Designers & UX Researchers Together”, with speakers from many top-tier tech organisations including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Dropbox and DICE (to name a few). Delegates were similarly diverse in their origin, heralding from all over the US and Europe, making for an extremely interesting day.

An overarching focus of the event was looking at how usability research and testing can be fed effectively and in a timely manner into the product design process (and consequently into development). Perhaps by coincidence, but no less useful, speakers placed a strong secondary emphasis on empathic design – the idea that through research, product design should tackle users’ underlying needs (i.e. the challenges they face) rather than simply giving them what they say they want.

Takeaways from the day which Geoff found particularly interesting included:

• Looking at ways in which to get product team and stakeholder buy-in to UX research findings (https://youtu.be/ESvHTy9ojMY);
• The capabilities and potential pitfalls of eye tracking in user testing;
• How the BBC ran a rapid research program, which enabled ongoing iterative design changes to their digital offerings;
• New UX paradigms which need to be applied to AI and conversation-based interfaces such as Google Home and Alexa, where users attribute human-like characteristics to the system;
• How DICE use user testing to bring blockbuster games such as Battlefield to market (including their multi-million user community testing environment).

The day provided a wealth of inspiring food for thought, which Geoff has been able to share with the rest of the team through our Friday talks. Taking time out of the office for learning and development is really important to us and The UX Conference certainly fitted the bill.

“The day was highly informative, and I’m looking forward to bringing the lessons learned to Green Custard’s working practices in the future.” – Geoff Martin

If you would like to find out more about our UX-conscious bespoke software, please get in touch.