UXLX: User Experience Lisbon Recap

Our teammates Julius and Juras had the chance to visit UXLX, Europe’s premier UX Design Conference in Lisbon, which took place from 23^rd to 26^th May 2017.

It was by far the greatest ever in size as well as in the number of attendees, not to mention top-notch speaker lineup with Usability Experts, Information Architects, and Interaction Designers.

The conference provided many workshops and presentations on research, design, and strategy. Although all four days were pretty intensive, our teammates got a lot of inspiration and insights and met many interesting people.

Jim Kalbach noted author, speaker, and instructor in UX design, information architecture, and strategy took the stage with his JTBD presentation. The concept of jobs to be done provides a lens for understanding value creation. It’s a straightforward principle: people “hire” products to fulfill a need.

He ran through the key points of value creation. Jim’s straightforward principle is that people “hire” products to fulfill a need.

For instance, you might hire a new suit to make you look good at a job interview. Or, you hire Facebook to stay in touch with friends. You could also hire a chocolate bar to relieve stress.

Viewing customers in this way – as goal-driven actors in a given context – shifts focus from the psycho-demographic aspects to needs and motivations. Although the theory of JTBD is rich and has a long history, practical approaches to applying the approach are largely missing.

Julius, Designer: “During the talk, Jim highlighted concrete ways to apply JTBD while working. I believe his insights will not only help design better solutions but also enables designers to contribute to broader strategic conversations.”

Katy Mogal, together with Michael Winnick, talked about Design for Bad. They shared a set of principles and stories drawn from their own experiences, primary research conducted on bad experience topics, and interviews with designers in relevant fields from dating to venture capital. Katy and Michael uncovered the reality of less-than-ideal product experiences and identified ways to make the bad user experience less painful and more motivating.

Juras, Sales Executive: “Speech covered the usual way of product creation for the happy path. E.g. “The product works flawlessly.” or “This service will solve X problem.” – but of course, bad things happen. These moments can leave us with unhappy users who may choose not to stick around for more frustration and rejection. Katy & Michael gave their insights, how to turn bad news into motivational and still appealing messages.”

The design is increasingly gaining influence in the companies we work, as well as the world at large, which means our actions as designers have an increasing influence on shaping the world around us. All of our individual choices collectively form our manufactured world. Do you know where the choices you are making are leading, not just on the scale of your project, but on a larger scale? Erik Dahl – an independent researcher and designer from Michigan, took all of us on a trip to discover the key principles of good design.

In his talk, Richard Banfield explored how people biology predicts which products will be successful at engaging and why we should avoid the dark arts of making our work addictive. He explained how experience designers, product makers, and marketers could be blamed for being master manipulators. After all, the digital products they create are so much part of people’s lives they often end up going to bed with, and almost the first thing they do once woke up.

Julius, Designer: “By the end of Richards’ talk, we have discovered how and why our physiology interacts with digital products and how designers can use this in positive ways to improve your UX and design work.”

Over 80 hours of intensive workshops and inspirational talks, 500 attendees from 40 different countries to network with, beautiful Lisbon is offering a vast range of side-activities.

This was an amazing experience for us and definitely one of our favorite editions so far. We are definitely coming back next year!