Money and Clients Are Everywhere, What’s Missing Are Problem Solvers — UX Munich 2015
Personal reflections
Apple watch is not cool! Those and others were the opening words that started this year’s two-day conference UX Munich that gathered around 270 developers, designers and UX-ers at the famous Münchner Künstlerhaus, which has served Munich’s artists as a place of entertainment, advice sharing and accomplishments for over 120 years.
This year’s presenter list included professionals with long term work experience on the global digital scene. Andy Budd (Clearleft), Erik Spiekermann (Edenspiekermann), Vitaly Friedman (Smashingmagazine), Denise Jacobs and studio Kurzgesagt are just some of the speakers who shared their experiences.
First day of the conference started with Conrad Albrecht-Buehler, interaction designer at BMW, whose lecture on Effective Design tried to answer how to validate one’s work and how to recognise whether you did well or not at the end of a project. It is interesting to note that his measure of success (”Strive to ship zero-design delta products!”) was in complete juxtaposition to the ideas of the next speaker Andy Budd, who considers zero-design delta product an indicator that we have not learned anything new through the process.
User Experience Doesn't Exist
Andy Budd, co-founder of the British digital agency Clearleft, disrupted things a bit by demystifying various existing UX titles, claiming that in fact only a small number of people have ever worked with actual UX designers. Talking about The User Experience of User Experience, he pointed out that the majority of information about UX Design circulating today is in fact lightweight and misleading, and that today’s UX “specialists” boil it down to a “cult of wireframes and UX” (Cargo cult). According to Budd, the field of UX design was defined back in the ‘90s, and we just have to know where to look for it (Don Norman and his first UX team).
“Good designers want to be proved wrong,
bad designers hope to be proved right” — Andy Budd
Among other presenters who shared their experiences was an interesting duo from the studio Kurzgesagt, whose entertaining educational scientific videos have millions of hits on YouTube, check out their channel. The lecture was idiosyncratically laid back, just like their videos, which I definitely recommend.
Do You Work for Assholes? Don’t!
As a final treat of the day was a ‘performance’ by the 68th year old German legend Eric Spiekermann, who completely won over everyone with his lecture Life in Beta, delivered straight to the point and without a shred of holding back:
“Never work for assholes or with assholes!”,
he tells his colleagues, whereas to his clients he says:
“Trust us, that’s what you hired us for, we are not suppliers but partners. Go back and learn how to be a client first”.
Eric does not believe in pitching, he thinks the clients should first learn how to be clients, he advises us to throw our specs through the window, to concentrate on the content hierarchy and not on the layout, on modules not pages, to base our designs on the content because only complete content can be reduced to its important parts. All hail Eric Spiekermann!
Second day featured talks on UX process, tools and techniques by Rachel Ilan Simpson, Bram Stein and Cat Richardson, or more specifically lectures on prototyping, consequences of using web fonts and a case study of gov.uk.
A round table with Tiffany Conroy (Soundcloud), Andy Budd (Clearleft), Conrad Albrecht-Buehler (BMW) and Cath Richardson (GDS) was moderated by Julie Ng (organizer) and initiated standard subjects of the trade, but also touched on some more existential questions that trouble digital workers.
They all agreed that one needs to have a strong work philosophy and that money is all around us, but what’s sparse are talented people with necessary skills who can solve actual problems. “Working on an ugly site gives the most opportunity for improvement!”, said Andy Budd in his answer to the audience’s questions.
Our Inner Critic Is Our Main Enemy
Banish Your Inner Critic was the title of the lecture by Denise R. Jacobs, author of the book CSS Detective Guide, which reflects on the things that hold us back in everyday creative work and how to eliminate them.
Her talk was very insightful and intimate. She talked about her fears that everybody could relate to. She suggested that we eliminate should/must/ought/have words from our vocabulary and transform negative stress to “eustress” (prefix “eu-” from Greek meaning “well, good” + stress = “good stress”), that we talk with our inner critic in order to contain it.
“Every time we make a mistake, we learn. That’s the whole point — perfectionism and procrastination feed of each other, you have to break that loop” — Denise R. Jacobs
Closing words were delivered by Vitaly Friedman (Smashingmagazine) with a lecture on his personal path from a web designer to a digital editor, telling everyone to “Continue doing what you love!”. The third day was reserved for an additional workshop with Vitaly where he explained responsive design in practice, as well as some tips & tricks of the trade.
The conference was organised by Refresh Munich, who give their entire proceedings back to the community by organising various events throughout the year, providing a platform for designers, developers and UX-ers to meet and exchange ideas. Hint: if you want to try traditional Bavarian barbecue and meet a group of likeminded people, check out some of their upcoming meetups.
With a few less interesting lectures and some minor technical glitches such as lack of WiFi, which made the communication between roaming attendees somewhat harder, the conference ended very successfully and with gallons of Bavarian beer. It is the informal mingling in the breaks and outside the conference venue what makes this type of events an important opportunity for making new friends and colleagues, as well as possible business partners.
Personal and professional growth is guaranteed at this type of events. See you at UX Munich 2016!
