(^how they opened the conference...it was that serious.)

I got the amazing opportunity to attend the UX Alive Conference with the Gold pass. Having recently graduated with a Master’s degree in Interaction Design, and having worked in the field for 6 months for a small tech company as the only UX practitioner, I was looking forward to understanding the role, values, practices of UX from the industry’s point of view. 

First day of the conference: 

I attended and took notes during 4 keynotes and 13 presentations. 

2nd day--Attended three following workshops:

Customer Service Management by IBM, 

Conversion Rate Optimization by UserSpots

Accessible User Experience Design Studio by Accessible UX

3rd day-- Attended two premium day workshops & one Night Workshop:

Lean UX Design for Mobile & Wearables by Greg Nudelman

Smart Responsive Design Patterns & Front-End Techniques by Vitaly Friedman, Co-Founder of Smashing Magazine

Night Workshop: UX of IoT

Overall Conclusions!!!

Overall, UX is a holistic approach utilizing tailored specific tools every step of the development process--from ideation to development that delivers an ideal/targeted goal and purpose. 

My biggest takeaways:

UX comes first in ALL new projects. 

The UX process identifies and discovers pain points, flaws, subtle frictions, and unseen obstacles for users to accomplish goals that affect the companies bottom line. 

The UX process relies heavily on a process that utilizes a variety of ever-evolvig best practices, methods, tools that maximize the discovery process 

The UX practitioner should have a combination of technical and soft skills. 

The UX process inspires creative, effective solutions & opportunities to provide meaningful, positive experience for users & improves bottom line. 

The UX process NEEDS better understanding, deep company buy-in, objectivity, patience, teamwork, collaboration, open-mindedness and confidence in the process to be successful. 

Challenges to UX: Striking the balance between--

Optimization vs Innovation

Unique/creative vs inclusive usability

thinking vs doing

research investment vs time/resources

objective decisions vs personal/ego/biases

human insight vs data insight

Technical Skills Acquired!

The Cynefin model 

How to conduct quality user research in just 7 days

Optimization practices for websites/mobile by Optimizely (workshop) and Smashing Magazine Founder/CEO (premium workshop)

Responsive Design Techniques methods by Google Dublin Director & Vitaly Freedman

UX for IoT practices/won book! (Night Workshop)

Mobile to Website conversions, optimizing conversion rates

User Testing Best Practices by Optimizely

Tea Leaf Tool (IBM Workshop) for customer experience management

Inclusive Coding/best practices for people with disabilities (premium workshop)

Accordion for Responsive Design

I also did some touristing while in Istanbul on the evening and weekend! Check out some of my pics :)

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