UX is one of the many (albeit newer) hats I gladly wear as Development Manager so attending "UX in the City" in an attempt to grow my UX knowledge and skillset seemed like a good idea.

I found day one very interesting.

Keynote : Why content is user experience - Sarah Richards - Content Design London

After Sarah Richards keynote talk about Content Design I realise more just how important content is to UX. And how damaging and repulsive bad content design is. It provided glimpses into user psychology when reading content/using websites, described common pitfalls and tips as well as promote what I would call 'plain talking'.

Research smarter, not harder - James Lang - Google

James Langs talked about how to go about getting adoption of research based development throughout an organisation was interesting. He described which approaches he had found succeeded and fail as well as how to overcome some of the negative reputations of product researchers. Some quotes I particulary enjoyed. "Don't assume everyone in your organisation cares about users". "Fast beats perfect". "Do less". He also suggested looking for stractical opportunitities i.e. those which deliver short term wins and also move towards strategic goals.

Mo' solutions, mo' problems - LLara Geddes - Beauty Bay

I found LLara Geddes talk interesting as she described how to almost start from scratch with UX in a new organisation and get the organisation making changes based on A/B testing and how UXers should question requests made of them. Has there been sufficient thought gone into this change request? But to also be flexible.

Brilliant never stops - Tom Bradley - Code Computerlove

Tom Bradleys talk described a range of things really but was loosly based around empathy. He recalled just how easy it is to get things wrong with the customer. How sometimes we forget how to treat people with sufficient respect, something we learn as children but forget as adults.

How open is your window? - Molly Watt - Molly Watt Ltd

Molly Watts closing talk about how we should be thinking more about inclusivity than accessibility in our products and websites was a nice one to finish on. She shared her story on how she became an accessibility consultant and champion.

It reminded me how, I started my early careers doing Web Accessibility work

The fact that well structured websites that are accessible and well engineered have many other benefits than just being easier to read on screen readers such as better SEO and higher search engine rankings is often overlooked.

I'd like to mention Mollys charity (The Molly Watt Trust) which sounds awesome. She says they provide kindles to disabled people which sounds awesome due to the ability of Kindles to change text size and read books aloud.

Day 2

Been a bit busy, but will write up my day 2 notes shortly.

Summary

I learned a lot during this event, things that I can take back to my business and as well as things I need to look into further.