Fishing for UX Design Thoughts at the Aquarium and Design Conference in Bristol
UX | Design | Information Architecture (Collaborate Conf 2016)
by Brett Mazoch, published in A Designer’s Thoughts
Collaboration, emotions and designing for higher reasons. These words can describe Collaborate 2016 (10–11th Nov), the design conference which was held a month ago in Bristol — one of the largest creative hubs in the UK outside of London. The event hosted experts in user experience, information architecture, accessibility and digital design and offered a workshop and nine inspiring talks. On top of that, it brought together people passionate about design and I was happy to be there as well.
At the unique venue among sharks (the conference took place at the Bristol Aquarium) there was a great opportunity to either absorb information from the talks or share thoughts during the coffee breaks. Thanks to that everyone could start conversation with UX designers, developers, business founders or other open-minded attendees coming with the same interest — meaningful design. The diversity of experts was one of the greatest aspects of the conference.
Well-performed talks introduced inspirational ideas and thoughts — touching topics about emotion & user experience, design collaboration or serious reflections of design impact. I would summarise the content into these three takeaways:
- EMOTIONS — Is it your goal create a great user experience? Then as designers, or people who directly participate in a design process, we should not forget to consider and analyse users emotions.
- COLLABORATION — These days, digital teams are more and more often populated by roles with very diverse skills and competences. The challenge and the key to the success is smart, effective and enjoyable collaboration.
- DESIGN FOR HIGHER REASON — Look around! You can see a lot of uncovered design problems and opportunities! Maybe they are not the most profitable, but still worth of doing and designing for higher reasons. Charities, environmental problems, small local businesses — all of them can enormously benefit from your design skills.
In the company Bluewire Technologies we are aware that good design and user experience are important and make a difference. That belief is even more true in the medical care industry, which we are focused on. The company is eager to support any design learning opportunity and thanks to that I can share with you my takeaways and my sketched notes below. These notes are from three talks which for me were the most beneficial and engaging.
And with that I am sending thanks to their authors and people who organised the conference!
Contents
- Practicing UX in an agile environment
- ‘Fun’ Isn’t A Dirty Word — Why you should incorporate design methods for children into your boring apps
- Collaboration by Design
No. 01 Practicing UX in an agile environment
by Vicky Brown, Senior UX Consultant in Nomensa
“You, as a designer, are here to represent THE USER, not the business, stakeholders neither developers…”
WATCH THE TALK
No. 02 ‘Fun’ Isn’t A Dirty Word — Why you should incorporate design methods for children into your boring apps
by Nat Al-Tahhan, Freelance Designer and Illustrator
“Introduce fun to your design. Fun is engaging, shareable and everyone’s favourite teacher.”
WATCH THE TALK
No. 03 Collaboration by Design
by Chris Chandler, Design Practice Lead in Philosophie
“Focus on making decisions and testing your ideas. As leader stay from the team, collaborate and let team do collaboration. Communicate more! Share more!”
WATCH THE TALK
Final thoughts — last but not least
Thank you for reading!
I have more thoughts to share with you about UI / UX design for web applications and websites and also about my experience as a visual designer of digital and software projects. If you are interested in topics like:
- design principles and rules to create great user interfaces,
- Sketch and other tools which I use in my design process,
- my top advice for getting a job as a Web / UI designer
- and more…
Then stay tuned at ► A Designer’s Thoughts.
See you soon and like Bristolians say — Cheers! Thank you for reading!
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The article was written by Břetislav “Brett” Mazoch while working as a designer in England. He moved there from the Czech Republic to follow his traveller’s dreams and work passion — UI/UX Design and Front-end Development.
