Top Upcoming UX Research Conferences to attend in 2023
If 6 months’ worth of learning and networking could be condensed into two days, would you do it?
UX research conferences give you this exact opportunity!
You get to meet inspiring people doing great work.
You realize how much there’s still for you to learn.
You find new opportunities you would have missed out on otherwise.
Through this article, we hope to provide you with an ever-evolving list of the best UX Research conferences you can attend in 2023. All the ticket prices here are in USD for consistency. Some prices may fluctuate a little due to conversion rates between the original currency and USD.
We will keep updating this article as new conferences open up.
If we’ve missed a conference, please let us know and we’ll add it here.
🗓️ Never miss a conference: Click here to quickly add these conferences to your calendar.
1. UX360 Research Summit 2023
When: February 15 and 16, 2023
Where: Virtual only
Tickets: $99 to $299
The UX360 Summit is hosted annually by Merlien Institute and is focused entirely on researchers. Merlien has over a decade of experience in hosting conferences, which makes the UX360 Summit a reliable option for someone looking to attend their first one.
The conference brings together speakers from tech giants around the world and the list for this year includes star researchers from Airbnb, Goldman Sachs, Google, and Lyft among others! The conference includes presentations from these top performers, interactive panel discussions, and 1-on-1 sessions to ensure that you network with other wonderful researchers.
Their early bird tickets will run out soon — we recommend grabbing one while you can.
2. Design Research 2023
When: March 14–16, 2023
Where: Melbourne, Australia | Virtual Available
Tickets: ~$345 to ~$485
UXAustralia is an organization dedicated to hosting UX events. To select their speakers, they rely heavily on their community’s input. They also do not let anyone buy their way into a speaking role — even the sponsors need to go through a qualification process if they want to speak. This focus on quality makes Design Research an incredible conference.
To quote their website, “this year’s focus is on the many ways design research helps us understand, shape, and address systemic issues from the level of individual products and services, and organization structures, through to societal challenges such as climate change and inequality.”
They are still accepting proposals for talks and will announce their speakers shortly. If you have a proposal, you can submit it here.
3. UX Copenhagen
When: March 23 and 24, 2023
Where: Copenhagen, Denmark | Virtual available
Tickets: ~$416 to ~$902
UX Copenhagen bills itself as Denmark’s most inspirational human experience conference. The conference focuses on UX, content, strategy, and research under a new theme every year. For 2023, their theme is “Invisibility” — the greatest quality any piece of UX can aspire to.
The conference will announce more speakers soon but the lineup is incredible already, including Technical Officers from WHO, puppeteers ( really!), and UX psychologists!
You can buy early-bird tickets right now. You can also register for a free “Conversations” session, where the founder of UX Copenhagen discusses potential themes for the next conference.
4. Advancing Research 2023
When: March 27–29, 2023
Where: Virtual only
Tickets: $845 to $1495
Advancing Research is a virtual research conference hosted by Rosenfeld Media. Since it’s entirely virtual, the conference relies on an intense content creation and curation process. The presenters spend months preparing for their talks, Rosenfeld designs the experience to improve your engagement, and you get to access content takeaways in the form of clips, presentations, notes, and resource lists.
The organizers recently stopped accepting proposals for presentations. We’ll get to know the final presenter list soon! The curators this year include the Head of Insights for Bumble and a Senior Research Strategist at Workday.
We recommend checking out this session from 2022 in which Victor Udoewa talks about decolonizing participatory processes in research.
5. UXInsight Festival 2023
When: April 17–19, 2023
Where: Breda, the Netherlands | Virtual Available
Tickets: TBA
UXInsights is an international organization dedicated to UX Research and the l argest UX Research community in Europe. They have been hosting an annual UX Research conference since 2016 and this year will be their biggest one so far!
The conference focuses on a new theme every year. 2022 was dedicated to ‘Growth in UX Research’ and had an enviable list of speakers including UX professionals at Airtable, Google Assistant, and Spotify.
The theme, speakers, and ticket prices for this year are yet to be announced. We will update this article as soon as we get more information. You can also sign up for their newsletter and get a hold of discounted tickets as soon as they are available.
6. UXPA International 2023
Where: Austin, Texas
Tickets: To be announced
The User Experience Professionals Association is a thirty year old global community of UX professionals pulling each other up. They host their UXPA International conference with the same goal.
While the speaker lineup isn’t publicly available yet, we’d recommend keeping an eye out for this conference. The networking and learning opportunities here are almost unparalleled due to the community’s experience and diversity.
Andrew Conyers, a senior service designer at UniSwiper says that “he couldn’t be more elated by the caliber of knowledge, openness and humility [he] encountered at 2022 UXPA International conference.” 2023 should be no different.
7. UXCon Vienna
When: September 13 and 14, 2023
Where: Vienna, Austria | Virtual Available
Tickets: ~$712 (pre-sale)
UXCon Vienna was started to act as a professional and cultural bridge between the UX Communities of Europe and the USA. It is a two-day event featuring workshops, networking periods, presentations, and helpful post-event content pieces.
The conference will revolve around topics such as the impact of AI on the field of UX, the ethics and sustainability of UX Research, personal development as a UX professional, and improving the accessibility of UX. In the past, they’ve hosted product design leads from Netflix, senior researchers from Meta, and UX thought leaders.
We will provide updates on their speaker list here as soon as it is available.
We hope you have a blast at these conferences!
Before we say goodbye, we’d love to leave you with three tips on making the best of your time at a UX Research conference.
Tips for attending a UX Research Conference
1. Plan Ahead
Do not go into a conference hoping to attend every single keynote and every single panel discussion and every single networking lunch break — you’ll be overwhelmed immediately!
Take your time before the conference and decide where you’d want to spend most of your time. Do include adequate buffer time in your schedule. You don’t want to leave an interesting conversation midway in order to reach the next presentation on your schedule.
If you’re attending in person, wear shoes that won’t kill you as you run around the conference area.
2. Prepare an elevator pitch about you
It’s always useful to have a short introduction prepared beforehand. When you meet someone interesting or inspiring, it will be easier to talk if you get through the introduction quickly. Of course, knowing the daunting “about me” answer beforehand will help ease your nerves.
What do you do? Why are you attending the conference? What makes your work interesting?
3. Quantity over Quality
Aim to invest most of your time and effort building a few meaningful relationships instead of in collecting a series of unfortunately useless business cards. Meaningful professional relationships will benefit both of you for years to come. Business cards will sit on your desk for a while and then get trashed.
Of course, follow up with those you connect with. Conferences are a great way to meet people doing the things you’d like to do someday — put in some effort and don’t let these connections go cold.
Use this link to add all of these and other upcoming UX Research conferences to your google calendar
Go out there. Conquer the UX Research world!
Originally published at https://www.looppanel.com.
