First UX conference in Romania — UX Bucharest 2015

In our last article we shared some thoughts on the Smartweb conference that took place in Bucharest in September, and if you remember we mentioned that if you want to achieve great things you need to keep developing yourself and always keep your eyes and ears open to every little new improvement that comes up, no matter the field you work in.

And so another conference came up and of course we were there to watch and learn. I’m talking about the first UX conference: UX Bucharest, that took place in Bucharest this month, and I’m glad I was there with my team to take part in lots of discussions about UX trends, in a room filled with special effects that made the experience even more exciting.

What is UX?

But first things first — What is UX? If you look up the definition it will state that UX is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability and the pleasure provided by the interaction between the user and the product. To put it in simpler terms, it’s all about our perspective on things. We like a particular image, a particular layout, a specific material or a certain font, but in the end there is also a generic purpose for all our applications. You need to make them as simple as possible serving their purpose and also make them nice too look at — that’s what UX is all about. As designers we must always find alternative solutions for each problem, and we must do that with an open mind.

Speakers

The first speaker at the UX Conference was Ingrid Lindberg, and she talked about how rewarding the first follower of our idea is a must, because without supporters there are no actual leaders, and that, no matter what, we must believe in our ideas and try to avoid idea smashers. And if you are an experienced UX designer or even a beginner, you know what she’s talking about, as you will face this problem every day of your UX career.

The next speaker was Karl Fast who taught us how to arrange and organize our content so that the user understands the data. Sometimes a nice and stylish layout content is not an easily understandable display of the content and vice-versa.

“The power of product personality” by Jeron Van Geel was the name of the next topic. He talked about the importance of defining the personality of a product and the emotional impact it can have on us. A well-defined personality can generate a positive feeling in our hearts after we associate with the product. The good thing is that, in the long run, we also associate those positive feelings with the product brand. This will help the company to easily sell other products to consumers.

The best example is Henry, the vacuum cleaner. With big bright eyes, he asks you to use him every day. You feel better doing an unpleasant job and the company wins more money in the long run. Everybody wins.

The next three talks were all about UX design, trends, good points, bad points, what is good, what is bad, the past, present and future of UX. We also found that the best way to engage customers on a product is to present the product in a storytelling manner.

When a story is created, there is a higher probability for the customer to get involved and be a part of it.

We also extracted some basic questions that would be of use for every project in which we are involved:

• What do you do?
• What is painful?
• What do you love?
• What do you wish?

The last session was held by Josh Clark and he presented another side of UX, the physical one. He presented the idea that technology must be invisible in the future. It must exist, it must be helpful and fully suited to our needs but it must disappear from our landscape as consumers. We must go back to what we like and to our basic interactions. He also presented us some interesting facts, namely that the average person spends at least 90 minutes a day on their phone. This means 23 days a year and 4 years in the average lifetime.

Conclusion

To conclude, the conference was a good experience, and we got some useful insight that will hopefully help us in our everyday projects. Looking forward to the next one, and who knows, maybe you will be there too. Because experience matters …