Blog skyhook logo A Guide to Must-Attend UX Events in 2016

Sep 28, 2015 9:34:00 AM

A Guide to Must-Attend UX Events in 2016

Posted by Skyhook

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As the best accessory to our smartphone, apps have woven themselves a part of our everyday lives. As shoppers, business-people, travelers or parents, when we have a question or problem, the solution is often “there’s an app for that”. The average smartphone user has 65 apps downloaded on their device and uses certain apps everyday (Flurry). Our love for apps has lead to the companies powering their concepts to rapidly grow in numbers, design and functionality - which is why differentiating your app in lasting ways is so critical.

An important piece of the app experience is a frictionless user experience. UX has quickly become the topic of conversation in most companies and apps - and for those competing to create the best app experience, UX needs to be addressed now.

If you want to learn the tricks to dynamic UX, meet leaders in the space and discover the best UX out there, there are a number of can’t-miss events designed to get you there.

Here's this years guide to the top UX events to attend:

UX/DEV Summit

Date: February 4-6, 2016

Location: South Florida

Why Attend:

UXDS is South Florida’s revolutionary new conference where designers, developers and entrepreneurs come together to enhance, learn, network and get hands on experience in the following areas: Angular, User Experience, Ionic, Front-End Development and Entrepreneurship.
Attendees will have the freedom to choose any talks from the UX, DEV, or START-UP tracks and enhance the skill of their choice. In addition, we have teamed up with South Florida’s leading experts and we will be providing an entire day of workshops and networking opportunities.

ConveyUX

Date: February 9-11, 2016

Location: Seattle

Why Attend:

Convey UX will train and inspire you to lead your company in UX. It is where lovers of great UX meetup to share, listen and learn, “where the sharpest speakers are carefully selected to cover the hottest design topics”. After attending your choice of sessions you'll leave ready to generate the best UX in your field.

The fourth annual gathering of UXers in the Pacific Northwest takes place in the Emerald City, which is busting at the seams with all the high-tech development. Companies big and small are opening offices here and the user experience scene is exploding. If you haven't been to Seattle before, this is a great time to get introduced. ConveyUX is a great opportunity for local and visitors to get together and enjoy the city while we hash about UX. 

Speakers include:

  • Jakob Nielson, Principal of Nielson Norman Group

  • Tom Merritt, host of the award winning Daily Tech News Show

  • Gareth Cook, Pulitzer Prize-winning magazine journalist and editor of the New York Times bestselling series The Best American Infographics.

  • Eric Schaffer, Founder of Human Factors International Inc.

  • Maria Giudice, VP of Experience Design at Autodesk

Register for Convey UX 2015 and follow their updates @ConveyUX

ACM IUI

Date: March 7-10, 2016

Location: Sonoma, CA

Why Attend:

ACM IUI 2016 is the 21st annual meeting of the intelligent interfaces community and serves as a premier international forum for reporting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces. ACM IUI is where the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community meets the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community.

ACM IUI focuses on the interaction between machine intelligence and human intelligence. While other conferences focus on one side or the other, this conference addresses the complex interaction between the two. They welcome research that explores how to make the interaction between computers and people smarter, which may leverage solutions from data mining, knowledge representation, novel interaction paradigms, and emerging technologies. They strongly encourage submissions that discuss research from both HCI and AI simultaneously, but also welcome works that focus more on one side or the other.

The ACM IUI conference brings together people from academia, industry, nonprofits and government, to showcase and discuss work results in an intimate, focused, and interactive setting. As an ACM conference, ACM IUI papers will appear in the ACM Digital Library and citation indices. There will also be a journal publication path for long papers.

Registration will be open soon.

 

UX Hong Kong

Date: March 11-12, 2016

Location: Kowloon, Hong Kong

Why Attend:

This two day conference offers an array of speakers, drink breaks and networking, and workshops on information architecture, designing user interfaces using psychological principles, managing UX, and lean UX prioritization.

Speakers:

  • Scott Berkun, the bestselling author of six books, including The Myths of Innovation, Confessions of A Public Speaker and The Year Without Pants.

  • Donna Spencer, a user experience designer, conference organizer and budding fashion designer.

  • Joe Leech, author of the book Psychology of Designers. He also writes for Smashing Magazine, Net Magazine and others about how to use psychology to improve the user experience.

  • Annette Priest, a UX Researcher, Strategy & Design Consultant.

  • Jay Rogers, UX architect, manager, and designer for over 10 years and has orbited the "agile design" problem from many perspectives. He is currently working at Australian software company Atlassian

Register for UXHK and follow their updates @uxhk.

 

Smashing Conference

Date: March 15-16, 2016

Location: Oxford

Why Attend:

SmashingConf Oxford 2016 will explore practical insights, tips, tricks and techniques that we all can apply to our work right away. Same game, same rules: 1 track, 2 conference days, 6 workshops, 14 excellent speakers and just 350 available seats. You can download the Convince-your-boss PDF.

Attend full-day workshops in the most historic rooms of the Town Hall. On Monday, Aarron Walter will provide hands-on design techniques in his Interface Design Bootcamp and Sara Soueidan will be leading her Mastering SVG class. On Thursday, Rachel Nabors will be leading her CSS Animations workshop, and Vitaly Friedman will be providing real-life RWD Tips and Tricks.

Speakers Include:

  • Aarron Walter is the General Manager of New Products at MailChimp, where he strives to make software more human. Aarron is the author of Designing for Emotion.

  • Rachel Nabors is an industry leader in the field of web animation. She travels the world, speaking and giving workshops. Her articles on the topic have been published in Smashingmag, A List Apart, 24 Ways, Adobe Inspire, and Net Mag.

  • Robbie Manson is a digital product designer at FreeAgent.

  • Sara Soueidan is a freelance front-end web developer from Lebanon — focusing on HTML5, SVG, CSS3 and JavaScript.

Tickets go live on October 6, follow updates @smashingconf.

 

Generate New York

Date: April 22, 2016

Location: New York

Why Attend:

Generate conferences are presented by net magazine - the world’s leading print and digital publication for web designers. Established in 1994, net magazine has been at the heart of web design and development for over two decades, and boasts an unparalleled list of contributors and supporters. A source of inspiration, education and networking opportunities, this year's Generate will be packed with more top content from world-class speakers.

Gain from the invaluable experience and knowledge of some of the biggest names in web design, including Mike Monteiro, Oliver Reichenstein and Karen McGrane, as well as some brilliant rising stars. There are still some speaker slots open, so if you have a great story to tell and practical tips you want to share with the community, get in touch!

Follow update @netmag.

 

The IA Summit

Date: May 4-8, 2016

Location: Atlanta, GA

Why Attend:

The world’s most prestigious gathering of information architects, user experience designers, content strategists, and all those who work to create and manage information spaces. This is where the community gathers to refine our craft, solve problems, and break new ground. Attendees include industry leaders, mid-weights, and juniors alike - arriving as guests, leaving as friends, and sharing in this celebration of IA practice and culture.

The IA Summit exists to promote discourse and offer practical advice about the strategic and intentional design of information environments. Recognized globally as the peak of information architecture learning, IAS is wellspring of knowledge for every information professional.

Stay informed and updated @IAsummit.

 

UXPA Conference

Date: May 31 - June 3, 2016

Location: Seattle

Why Attend:

UXPA International is combining forces with the UXPA Seattle Chapter to bring the 2016 UXPA International Conference to the Emerald City! Whether you’re running an in‐house UX department or managing a team at an agency that services many clients, you know how hard it can be to keep on top of emerging trends.

This is where UXPA 2016 conference comes in. This is the place to be for learning about best practices for user‐centered product development, usability research, product design, and real‐world case studies. You won’t find a better place to learn about new ideas, methods, tools and techniques. Return as a stronger team member, re‐charged and ready to share those new approaches and perspectives with colleagues and the business.

Participants will:
  • Learn best practices from global UX experts. Past year’s conferences featured an incredible roster of experts from companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and GE ‐ companies that really know the value of designing amazing user experiences. With a choice of pre-conference courses, collaborative sessions, presentations and panels, attendees are bound to build up their UX arsenal.

  • Reinvigorate passion for their work. UXPA 2016 lets participants step off the project treadmill for a few days and reconnect with the passion that inspired them to become user experience professionals in the first place.

  • Build new relationships. UXPA 2016 is a truly international conference, which means your employee has the opportunity to meet UX practitioners from around the world. Perhaps they have solved similar pain points or project challenges you are currently facing. Don’t forget – this conference is tied to an organization with a 20+ year history in the field and calls some of the best and brightest members.

Early Bird pricing is available here and follow their updates @UXPA_Int.