Last Friday, some of the Angry Creative team headed down to the Brighton Dome Concert Hall for UX Brighton 2017. Having enjoyed last years conference so much the team were very excited to attend this year. The event promised eight thought-provoking sessions about how confronting complexity can improve the way we create digital products, such as responsive websites and mobile apps. And we couldn’t wait to get there and start learning about the latest in UX!
The team’s takeaways from UX Brighton 2017
Rich Copping – Creative Director
“All the talks had some incredible nuggets of info, but for me, the event was bookended with two stand out speakers. James at Clearleft opened the day covering subjects such as Inductive, Deductive and Abductive Reasoning. He even mentioned the Golden Ratio which is one of my favourite topics. The day closed with an incredibly charismatic talk from Simon Wardley, featuring no less than 200 slides, he debunked and satirised business strategy jargon and showed us why maps should matter for business, design and UX. A Thoroughly great event and I would encourage anyone to seek out the videos which will be available soon via UX Brighton.org.uk.”
Nic Fusciardi – WordPress Developer
“2017 Marked my second attendance of UX Brighton and yet again it did not disappoint. Getting insights from other peers in the industry really helps to answer some of those niche problems in the back of your head that you had just accepted as a burden or daily annoyance.
The one speaker that particularly stood out for me was Simon Wardley and his Wardley Maps. It’s mapping out of users needs in a way that I had never seen before but yet seemed worryingly obvious at the same time in comparison to more “traditional” methods.
I look forward to seeing what next year brings!'”
Tom Doidge – Web Designer
“Last year was great but this year was even better. It really felt that every talk was relevant to what we do here at Angry Creative. There were a lot of interesting snippets of information from the day but these were the ones that really resonated with me. Gerry McGovern reminded us that what people say is often completely different to what they do and while cutting-edge, innovative solutions look great, they very rarely fit with the target audience. Liz Keogh also made the point that you have to learn by getting people to do things. It’s okay to fail as this can lead to new discoveries – Success but not in the way you expected”
Jasper Cheyney – Web Designer
“UX Brighton was sweet this year, the subject of Complexity left me unsure of how varied the talks would be, but I was pleasantly surprised! Gerry McGovern stood out for me with his “No bullshit” approach to identifying and simplifying “Customer top tasks” to ensure the product or service was as easy to use for the customer as possible. He warded against succumbing to stakeholder “ego tasks” and hot just because they are the one in charge it doesn’t mean you have to agree with their suggestions.
One of the other examples he gave was an interactive map to help people towards specific destinations which were envisaged as a ‘cool’ and ‘hip’ feature which in reality hindered the customer’s top task progress.
The other talk that particularly interested me was from James Box, the UX Director from Clearleft; his talk was based on responding to complexity throughout the project in an effective and managed way, one comment from him resonated with me which was to think about the early design process as a squiggled line, bunched up at the beginning and gradually flattening out, inferring that the design solutions are always there, you just have to spend the time to look for them.”
Callum Harrod – WordPress Developer
“UX Brighton was a brilliant event with an insight into some of the top UX specialists in the industry and how they tackle their everyday UX problems. Personally, my favourite talk was from James Box, he really broke down what people percept as a complexity in their user experience design and how to overcome this. I also thoroughly enjoyed Liz Keogh, Simon Wardley and Gerry McGovern, they were all fun and really inspiring. Overall it was a great day out and I learned tonnes on complexity in UX!”
Sarah Strachan – Producer
“This was my first time attending UX Brighton and I was struck by the variety of talks that were given. It really highlighted to me the interdisciplinary nature of UX and design – if we work in digital we are all in some way designers of something. We are all trying to help our customers or clients solve a problem and to do it in the best way possible for both parties.
One of the talks that will stick with me was regarding the social responsibility that comes with being a designer, never before have we had the ability to touch so many peoples lives and we all have a responsibility to ensure that when we are doing this we are paying mind to our end users and how they might be impacted in ways we may not have expected. We are changing the way we interact on the web and this has psychological impacts. There are ways in which we can affect real positive change – my takehome is to think much more about how end users will feel about the experience of using a product or website, not just the functional outcomes.”
Edd Hurst – Producer
“It was really interesting to me to see how introducing new methodologies and ideas into a delivery team can really empower them, not just to see the bigger picture, but to come up with solutions and explanations that might otherwise go missing. Liz Keogh’s talk in particular really highlighted how some really amazing things happened by accident, or as a response to some other demand that could never have been predicted otherwise. If nothing else, it’s shown me the importance of keeping my eyes peeled for the unintended genius moments in my work.”