Top 10 UX and Design Conferences of 2020
Conferences are an excellent tool for learning new design skills, honing best practices and innovations in design, networking, and developing your own design skills, no matter what your job within the design industry.
The last decade of design conferences has expanded to include not just visual design and the art of making things beautiful, but also end to end ux design challenges and how to solve them (and 2020 is no different). The conference list is exhaustive, so we’ve compiled a list of 10 of our favorite UX and Design Conferences of 2020 to help you book your attendance and travel, today! See you there!
Experience Design: Expanding the Boundaries of Experience (https://experiencedesignweek.iqpc.com/)
The Experience Design conference brings together 26 different speakers for 3 days of workshops and hands-on design sprints. The presenters come from multiple industries and will lead 30-minute breakout sessions in 3 different categories:
- Data and Tech
- People and Process
- Design and Innovation
Additionally, there are 2-hour XD Therapy sessions also in the afternoons to attend in lieu of 30-min workshops.
Location: Denver, CO
Date(s): February 24–26, 2020
Cost: $2,599 — $3,999
Key Topics: Design sprints, Design Research, Design Diversity, Strategic Design, Data-driven Design, & Infrastructure Development
The UX Conf (https://theuxconf.com/)
The UX Conf is one of the best international events for UX designers. The two-day conference starts with keynote presentations and then attendees will be able to attend hands-on workshops during day two. The focus of the conference is the how-to design vs the why behind the design. Attendees are sure to learn new ways to advance their work and strategies they can employ to create better web experiences.
Location: London, UK
Date(s): March 2–3, 2020
Cost: £299 — £598
Key Topics: Accommodation, Data Privacy/Protection, Design Language
Creative South Family Reunion (https://www.creativesouth.com/ )
The Creative South company is celebrating 10 years of creativity and design with a ‘family reunion’ styled conference. There are 16 confirmed speakers who range from the Development department to the C-suite level of companies.
More workshops are still in the works, but there are some already lined up. Currently, this is a more tech-focused and developmental focused conference. In addition to workshops, attendees will also have access to a vendor hall during the 3-day conference.
Location: Columbus, GA
Date(s): April 2–4, 2020
Cost: $97 — $447
Key Topics: Logo Design, Working with Adobe Capture, Tips, Tricks and Techniques, more workshops TBA.
How Design Live (https://www.howdesignlive.com/)
During this 4-day conference, attendees will benefit from over 100 different sessions and workshop offerings. With 30 years of service to the UX and design industry, the HOW conference has made a name for itself.
Between sessions and workshops, attendees will have the chance to network with over 3,000 other attendees and will also be able to engage vendors and exhibitors relevant to the industry in the exhibit hall.
Location: Boston, MA
Date(s): May 4–7, 2020
Cost: $95 — $1,695
Key Topics: Workshop titles are being finalized and the full schedule will be released closer to the event.
FrontEnd Fest (https://frontendfest.io/)
For those working in the web development field FrontEnd fest is not a conference to miss. Attendees will be able to choose from over sixty different 90-minute sessions that all address aspects of modern web development and technologies.
Attendees will have the chance to dive into topics and move beyond web development 101 in order to actively move forward in their field.
Location: Chicago, IL
Date(s): May 6–8 2020
Cost: $1,225 — $1,525
Key Topics: Vue.js Training; Reducing page load time and Retaining Website Visitors; How to Leverage APIs to Share Data; Working with and Developing Talking Applications
Confab: The Content Strategy Conference (https://www.confabevents.com/)
One of the best aspects of this content-design focused conference is that the workshops are split into Intro and Intensive levels, allowing presenters to hone in closer to the skill-sets of attendees.
There will be over 40 speakers, representing companies like Adobe and Atlassian. In addition to the breakout workshops, keynote presenters will cover a range of industry-related materials and innovations for 2020. Much of the material covered will focus on UX, storytelling, how to structure your site (and business models) and general website accessibility.
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Date(s): May 17–20, 2020
Cost: $1,095 — $2,695
Key Topics: SEO (Designing findable content); Structuring Content; Designing Journeys, stories and customer mapping (UX); Content Engagement Metrics; Supporting Accessibility, UX Writing, and Catering/Creating Modern Search Experiences
UX and Project Management Case Study Conference (https://www.frontutah.com/conference/)
This case study conference provides attendees the chance to learn about product management and UX alongside 800+ of their peers. There will be 16 different presentations and over 1,000 product designers to engage with during the 2-day conference.
Going on its 6th year, this conference promotes the importance of cross-functional teams and trains attendees on both project management and the user experience while keeping design at the front and center of the discussion.
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
Date(s): May 28–29, 2020
Cost: $500 — $630
Key Topics: Design Maturity, Product Development and Design, Team Collaboration
IDC2020: Interaction Design and Children Conference (https://idc.acm.org/2020/)
For those working in the tech industry whose company or products are geared towards children, this IDC conference is one to attend for sure! The conference will focus on research results that powers design and development of interactive technologies for children.
Attendees will be able to attend hands’ on workshops or attend presentation-style courses during the 4-day conference. A bonus of this conference is the intentionally small groups that will be allowed to attend each workshop/course (max 25) which allows attendees to ask more direct questions and walk away with a more intimate learning experience.
Location: London, England
Date(s): June 21–24, 2020
Cost: TBA
Key Topics: Call for workshop and course presentation topics is still open through March. A final schedule will be released closer to the event date.
Fintech Design Summit (https://fintechdesignsummit.com/new-york/)
This conference is geared towards attendees who work in and around the FinTech (financial technology) industry. It focuses on product design, UX and strategy for this specific niche market.
Attendees have 16 different speakers and workshops to choose from and will have the ability to network with over 300 other professionals in the FinTech industry during this one-day-only conference.
Location: New York, NY
Date(s): June 25th, 2020
Cost: Registration coming soon — currently those who want to attend can complete a short form to get on the attendance list as space is limited.
Key Topics: Workshop titles are being finalized and the full schedule will be released closer to the event.
An Event Apart (https://aneventapart.com/)
An Event Apart is a conference series designed for web developers across the US and internationally. Attendees will have 6 different locations/dates to attend and over 15 different industry-related speakers to learn from at each location.
The focus of An Event Apart conference is to share better design, better code and better content for developers, and offer insight into the work as an interaction designer.
Locations: Washington DC, Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis, Orlando, San Francisco
Date(s): April, May, June, August, October, December
Cost: Varies
Key Topics: Design, Code, Tags, Animation, Designers vs Developers, Performance, How to design with accessibility
Which conference will you and your design team attend in 2020? Any favorites we didn’t include? Add them in the comments below!
SeaLab has been ranked as one of Design Rush’s top user experience design agencies of 2020!
