Is it any good?
I just attended the NNG Usability Week in SF but was a bit disappointed, most of the content was a bit trivial IMO.
Is it any good?
I just attended the NNG Usability Week in SF but was a bit disappointed, most of the content was a bit trivial IMO.
So here I am at UX London 2012. Is it any good? Yehuh! Apart form the lack of wifi at the venue which has not gone unmentioned by a single person here. It should be working - it's just broken, and will probably be fixed the day after we leave. To be honest - maybe it wasn't a bad thing to have people paying attention rather than tweeting every damn word. For those interested - the twitter hashtag for this event is just (oh jeez - I'm borrowing someone's MacBook Air - where's the hash on this thing. Alt-3 in the UK - thank you!) #UXLondon
Today was the first and only day of talks, the next two consisting of workshops. So far we had Bill Buxton, Anders Ramsay, Luke Wroblewski, Kristina Halvorson, Jared Spool, Bill Derouchey, Jon Kolko and a couple of others giving amazing, engaging and inspiring talks that have left me on a real high buzz. I'm hoping that I can compartmentalise all this input in my sleep, because honestly, theres so much I found interesting that I don't think I want to try and distill notes - because I can almost guarantee nearly everything that was said today might be useful at some point in the future - if not the second I get back to work.
Fortunately others have done some of that notetaking already - like Luke Wroblewski who has published his notes on his website:
Harry Brignull: From Print to iPad
Jon Kolko: Social Entrepreneurship
Bill Derouchey: Design with an Opinion
Jared Spool: Mobile & UX A Perfect Storm
Anders Ramsay: Agile UX Rugby
Kristina Halvorson: Content Strategy Roadmap
Bill Buxton: Long Nose of Innovation
Luke Wroblewski's own talk was much along the lines of the chapter on organising mobile content from his book Mobile First - stressing the importance of considering content first and navigation second.
In the bar after the first day, most of the speakers were there - I found myself talking to Luke Wroblewski briefly about the pros and cons of various Q/A forums for UX topics - i.e. like UX.SE and Quora. I'd like to have explored this more but he had to disappear to the UX book club event that was in the same venue.
I had a chat with Stephen Anderson about his workshop tomorrow - the quest for emotional engagement and information visualisation which I'm incredibly excited about as I've always been a proponent of visualisation for conveying ideas, designs, and just about anything to other people.
If the next two days are as inspiring as today I'm going to leave here very happy to recommend this event to others who may be unsure whether it's worth considering next year.
UX London was awesome. It's inspired me (again) and given me so much confidence that I'm doing all the right things as a UX professional.