With less than two weeks to go, UX Scotland promises yet another year of incredible speakers and topics. If you haven’t purchased your tickets yet, be sure to purchase them while you can as the event is almost sold out.
If you already have tickets and, like us, you’re finding it challenging to decide which sessions to attend at this year’s UX Scotland event, fret not! Every single session seems to offer something amazing, making it very hard to choose but also promising great outcomes no matter what you chose.
To help guide you through the program, Scott (our Junior Designer) and Catherine (our Junior UX Designer) have taken the time to select their top sessions for each day – which we all agree are must-attends.
Day 1
11:15 Throw away your slides: talking with people, not at them
Mark Cruth – Atlassian
In this interactive case study session, participants will discover effective practices and techniques for making meetings more collaborative, enabling improved productivity, execution, and connection within distributed teams, and moving away from traditional slide-based presentations.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
We’re always curious to learn more about how we can make presentations and meetings even more engaging and collaborative, and learn new methods to inform our future work.
12:15 Building & using a UX research prioritisation framework
Emily Nicholson – Sage
In this workshop, participants will engage in discussions and activities to establish research priorities, enhance collaboration with stakeholders, and gain insights on when UX research may not be necessary, enabling them to effectively communicate requirements and utilise a priority framework for guiding future research efforts.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
A hands-on workshop to learn more about research prioritisation frameworks and how to use them – in particular to know when user research is not needed.
14:00 How to design the interfaces of the future with hands & gesture
Matt Corrall – Ultraleap
In this talk, Matt from Ultraleap explores the design principles, gestures, and UI components of hand-tracking technologies, drawing on real-world projects to illustrate what works and what doesn’t in creating natural and comfortable interaction experiences in the realm of VR and touchless displays.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
The future of interactive design is something that always excites us, so we’re excited to hear about how existing technologies can be leveraged and what new technologies that are being developed.
15:30 Inclusive by default: creating experiences for everyone
Andy Dykes – Tesco Bank
Tesco Bank will take us through their journey of empowering colleagues to design inclusive experiences and propositions that support customers’ vulnerabilities and accessibility needs, sharing their research, toolkit, framework, and the challenges they’ve encountered along the way.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
Inclusivity is a high priority for us at Border Crossing UX, so we’re interested to hear more and gain practical insights about Tesco Bank’s framework, journey and research.
Day 2
09:45 Embracing the complexity mindset
Gerry Scullion – Founder of The Human Centered Design Network (This is HCD)
In this keynote, Gerry Scullion will address the human desire for simplicity in design, acknowledging the inherent complexity involved. He explores three key areas: the challenges of working with complex systems, the lessons we can learn from nature’s approach to complexity, and the concept of care-full design, including vulnerability, dialogue, and duty of care for organisations and change-makers.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
This keynote speech promises to be an invaluable opportunity to gain fresh perspectives, deepen our understanding of design challenges, and explore innovative approaches to problem-solving. This keynote also holds special meaning for our Junior UX Designer Catherine, as the Human Centered Design Network was one of her first introductions to conscious, ethical and user/human focussed design and getting comfortable with the complexity and uncertainty of design problems!
11:15 Trauma-informed service design: lessons learned from researching with citizens through the COVID-19 pandemic
Kate Every – Mastek
This workshop explores the principles of trauma-informed design, highlights shortcomings in current practices, and involves a group activity to develop a ‘Trauma-informed Charter’ for incorporating trauma-informed principles into design.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
We were particularly drawn in by Kate’s background in Human Rights Practice, specifically her research into restorative justice and survivor-centred approaches to criminal justice. We’re excited to learn more about how she has transferred this knowledge of humans, psychology and vulnerability into her design career.
14:00 Making a case for a design system in a large organisation
Paul Niblock – Royal London
This case study session shares the journey of successfully launching a design system, highlighting both the successes and pitfalls encountered along the way. Participants will gain an understanding of the benefits of a design system, learn how to make a compelling case for it within their organisation and receive.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
It’s always great to have an open conversation on successes and pitfalls. This talk promises to offer practical implementation tips on launching Design Systems from Paul Niblock, who brings over 14 years of experience as a digital designer.
Day 3
11:15 The circle of life: lessons learned from killing services
Anne Dhir – SPARCK
This talk emphasises the importance of considering the decommissioning process in UX design and draws insights from various industries to explore how learning from closures can lead to better initial service design, with a focus on effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and adaptability.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
While the start-up and implementation phases of services are often discussed, the closing of services, and making sure this is done well, is something that doesn’t get discussed as much. We’re looking forward to hearing more about how studying why services close can support how we build them in the future.
12:15 Digital legacy – designing for bereavement
Joanne Richardson & Craig Priestman – Sage
This case study presentation highlights the approach and learnings of a small team in designing a digital legacy service, sharing real research stories from bereaved relatives and insights from the Customer Relationship team, showcasing their ability to build a compelling case and experiment to support small businesses in maintaining control over their data for the future.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
An interesting case study subject, we’re curious to hear about the design process of something as personal and delicate as bereavement and how they approach it.
14:00 How to design content for people in crisis
Miriam Vaswani – SPARCK
This talk complements the Trauma-informed Service Design session and focuses on designing content for people in crisis situations. Given my interest in designing for vulnerable populations, I’m eager to gain practical knowledge and a focused approach to designing better content.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
A great tie in to the ‘Trauma Informed service design’ talk on Day 2 and our own work in designing for healthcare organisations and vulnerable people, this session is sure to help us lear more and gain a practical focus on how to design better content for people in crisis.
14:00 Artificial intelligence: impact on UX
Sunny Stueve – Leidos
This talk explores the implications of increasing AI usage on UX design, discussing topics such as trust issues, design considerations, research questions, and the potential automation of UX processes.
Why we’re looking forward to it:
AI is a growing and now ever-present feature across workstreams, so staying ahead of the trend and gaining a deeper understanding of what the landscape might look like in the next 5-20 years will help us better prepare for it.
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UX Scotland 2023 will be held from the 7th to the 9th of June at Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh. Head to the UX Scotland website to learn more about each session and to see the full programme.
As sponsors of UX Scotland, we’re looking forward to attending the event and getting to see all our lovely peers. If you are coming along, please stop by our stand as we’d love to have a chat and catch up! Hope to see you there.
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