Web Summit — Product Designer’s Perspective and Review

My take on Web Summit 2022 and a look at this event from the point of view of a Product Designer.

First few facts about Web Summit 2022. Conference lasted 4 days and it was held in Lisbon, Portugal, attracting +70K attendees including some 2K startups and 1K investors, from all over the world.

Lisbon is a great place to hold such a conference. Its first-class cuisine, spectacular architecture, stunning panoramically views, start-up vibes and laid-back culture of no unnecessary rush, are more than enough for an amazing background for the event.

If you are interested in how to navigate through the event and read a review from point of view of a General Attendee, go check it out it here: Web Summit 2022 — Essential Survival Guide & Review →

Web Summit App

Ok, let’s get to the meat straight away. Web Summit App is not state-of-the-art user experience. While using the Web Summit App I had 3 initial thoughts.

• ⚡ The Engineering Team did a great job,
• ⚡ The Design Team did a good job,
• ⚡ Product people either have planned the whole app delivery badly or did not do their homework for the most part.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Hardly ever one size fits all, but while using the App I had a sense its delivery was rushed (?) and some low-hanging fruits were missed. Don’t get me wrong, part of the App’s features actually made Web Summit operable from the point of view of a single attendee.

Yet, continuing my train of thought, I’d love to see the analysis and data, or at least hypotheses that made this design. When you land in the welcoming screen a lot of space is wasted on things that became redundant after the first 5 uses of the App. I miss quick buttons to ‘My Schedule’, without it I needed 3 clicks to get there.

I see the arguments of giving back to partners, sponsors through space on the ‘landing page’. But I’m quite sure the most revenue and final reason for the existence of the Web Summit comes from the attendees. And that would be my main point of focus.

Especially, since I guess you should cater for the needs of 95% of your user base, whose experience translates into attendance in future editions, rather than to appease marketing needs of your sponsors and partners. Which in the end would be better served, since the overall experience of the conference reflects on them directly. And there are plenty of opportunities to market them to the attendees as well in the App itself.

This is why I started to question whether the design and execution was flawed or the vision of it. And it seems the latter. It looks like Engineering and Design tried to make most of the vision that was laid down before them.

Web Summit Main Themes

In 2022 main themes, were:

• ⚡ (1) Metaverse and,
• ⚡ (2) Web3

I know it seems like a stretch, but none of the talks helped Metaverse nor Web3 to shake off its current images. In the case of Metaverse nobody even tried to show real value in joining for a spin, nor gave a compelling vision of the metaverse future ahead of us. In the case of Web3, guys presenting or marketing within the field did not rid themselves of a murky, shady image.

And in both fields there are loads of examples, that these technologies work and bring tons of value to the business and society as a whole. Why not lead with that?

Design-wise, people presenting within both themes, omitted it almost completely.

Yanick Sevigny in his ‘Designing for web3: Building a better decentralized web’ masterclass did a great showcase of design opportunities for Web3. Among great insight, vouching for simplicity and security of products did stand out, alongside innovative UI design. Though I was missing:

• ⚡ Data backing up such UI design, user experience and,
• ⚡ Solutions for building up trustworthiness of Web3 products.

I do agree that simplicity and security of products should be the main drivers of their design, and I can sign my name under it with both hands, vouching for that. Yet, I’d argue that until industry focuses on building trust around their products, no security nor simplicity will turn the public towards a decentralized and token-based economy.

Regarding the innovative UI, I’d argue that its adoption should be solely grounded on business objectives. A product with great new ways of doing certain things through an innovative UI solution, not backed with millions of dollars, will not fly high. These kinds of scenarios can happen in FAANG circles or when the solution is actually so good, it doesn’t need a problem that needs to be solved — like it happened with Tinder swipe.

For example, in the case of the financial sector, the users taking care of their decentralized and token-based financial chores, should do it seamlessly and with a wider spectrum of features they really want. If innovative UI will enhance that — great — but it seems big fish can take only that risk. It makes more sense to take existing UX/UI patterns and build up trust with insanely great communication instead. In the end, the user shouldn’t have to think (UX/UI) nor worry about it (trust).

How was it for a Product Designer in Web Summit?

Although my overall opinion on the event in general was good, unfortunately I have to admit that 75% of the talks, masterclasses and panels regarding design, in a broad sense, were neither deeply insightful nor focused on solving real problems.

A leading example of that was a talk christened with the name: ‘UI/UX trends in 2023 and beyond’.

Jeez, the title of the talk could not be further from its contents. Not a single segment of discussion was about any UX/UI trend, nor in the past, nor in the future. There was one sentence identifying that users are using products/apps everyday, and design should acknowledge that. Mind blowing right?

But there was also another side of the spectrum. Where speakers really tried to sell themselves, their product, service, through a great insight, crucial questions and five-star storytelling.

My top 3 honorable mentions are:

• Yuhki Yamashita from #Figma with the talk ‘Confessions of modern design: How design is changing, and how we need to change with it’;
• Brian Collins from #Collins with ‘Building better futures at scale’, and;
• Yanick Sevigny from #Toptal with a ‘Designing for web3: Building a better decentralized web’ masterclass — already mentioned above.

So in fact, there were diamonds like Yuhki’s and Collins’ talks, and unpolished gems like Yanick’s masterclass. And I’m happy to say all of them will contribute to my design endeavors and raise levels of creativity and productivity in my current/future line of work.

Final thoughts

First of all, thank you for bearing with me till the end 💪. Secondly, I wanted to thank my Lisbon crew from The Workshop — it was an amazing 4 days ❤️.

And in a brief summary, if you decide attending Web Summit is a right move for you:

• 💡 Expect a decent amount of design-centered insight,
• 💡 Try to vet speakers before attending the talk, to increase probability you’ll hear something that is in fact insightful for you,
• 💡 Meeting and talking to other designers and discussing things, that are important to you, should be your priority numero uno.

While you should have a clear plan and set of goals, also leave some time to take in the event in a more laid-back way. Some of the coolest design conversations that we’ve had, happen in the line for a food truck and around a table. So it’s important to make connections, so be not afraid of casually bumping into people.

Get ready for a refreshing experience. And even though apparently, the event won’t be oversaturated with design topics, just try to look for things that are interesting and focus on extracting value from what you experience.

This article was first published on November 8th in my website, and later on divided into 2 parts with some editorial changes. If you want to check out the original one you’ll find it here →