Last month we attended the UXDX EMEA conference in Dublin with a group of project managers from our AI Development department. UXDX stands for user and developer experience, and we were keen to learn more about product management, especially how to accelerate product development. The conference did not disappoint! It was packed with excellent talks and useful workshops. After only a few days we returned home with a wealth of innovative ideas and techniques that we will use to improve our products even further.
Overall, the conference took place over three days and was divided into two parts. The first two days focused on talks, panels, and forums and the third day offered several interesting workshops. We decided to stay for the weekend and do some team building activities on our own time as well.
Two full days of talks, panels, and forums
The first two days of the UXDX EMEA conference focused on talks, panels, and forums. While the talks were mostly given by individual speakers sharing their insights on certain topics, panels were made up of several experts discussing these topics from different viewpoints while also including the audience. In forums, attendees engaged in a mediated but otherwise unstructured free-flowing conversation directly with each other. There were always several forums to choose from at the same time and the split into smaller discussion groups encouraged active participation.
One of our personal highlight talks was “From Visual Design to Vision Design: The role of Product Designers in shaping product direction.” This talk provided us with useful insights especially for our larger projects, because it highlighted the importance of also focusing on a longer-term vision over immediate execution. As the project grows, the product team will gradually have more impact on the overall direction of the product, so it is advisable to think about the vision from the start, alongside the short-term goals.
One of the panels that inspired us the most probably was “How leaders can empower their teams”. As a development and consulting company, we organize our project in an agile fashion. This can entail a lot of leeway for the project members on how they want to achieve their tasks. We learnt that modern work requires intrinsic motivation which means that the role of a (project) leader is changing as well, shifting from merely checking off tasks to empowering teams during product development.
A forum that was very informative on development techniques was “Modern Development Principles”, where we critically discussed whether principles such as SOLID should still be adhered to today, and what potential alternatives may be viable for modern software stacks. We also talked about some of the latest insights on topics such as robust software testing methods from a multitude of angles and across different companies.
Overall, we had a great time during the first two conference days and were able to take away a lot of new ideas, insights and techniques regarding both project delivery and product development methods which will help us to further improve our products and how we work together.
One full day of workshops
On the third and last day of this year’s UXDX EMEA conference we attended several workshops with the overreaching goal for the participants to gain some hands-on experience with new tools and techniques. The workshops tailored to two hours and encouraged collaborative work in small groups. Workshop moderators from leading industry companies such as Figma, AWS, and SAP covered topics reaching from design systems, design debt and structuring complex problems to customer centricity.
The workshop “Breaking Down Complex Problems” led by Rory Madden, Founder of UXDX, was all about identifying problems, how to break them down and how to solve them. One key message of the workshop was that problem identification can be structured by writing out a user journey and breaking down the various steps along the said user journey. In data science this, e.g., helps to think more from the perspective of an end-user rather than the perspective of the developer. Making use of user journeys can also help to identify what aspects of a product are affected by different design choices, thus leading to more founded decisions in scoping a solution to a given problem. Another important topic we gained insight into concerns assumptions. Desirability, viability, feasibility, and usability are the four main directions to consider. A pre-mortem analysis can also lead to additional insights with respect to existing assumptions.
In the workshop “Building Customer-Centric Products” by Daria Tarawneh, Head of UX at AWS, we got insight into the product development approach at AWS. In their approach to product design, they start at the ‘back’ with the user experience and work their way up to the technical implementation from there. A medium used by AWS to ensure customer-centricity, especially in the early phases of product development are press releases. PMs should work on the press release from the beginning of product development, as this ensures that the correct questions have been answered regarding for example who precisely the end users are going to be. During the workshop we therefore also wrote our own press releases. These press releases are not necessarily meant to be published anywhere but are written as if they would. This helps to highlight relevant questions for better product design and development.
Overall, we really enjoyed the workshops as they provided deeper insights into topics of product management and user experience. All discussed problems were tackled in small groups of interdisciplinary teams composed of product managers, UX designers and developers, what provided further insight on how different area deal with different problem settings.
Fun activities during the evenings and weekend
An important aspect of conferences besides talks, forums and workshops are of course networking and getting to know employees and managers of other companies. The organization team of the UXDX EMEA conference in Dublin did a great job with this with activities such as a guided sightseeing tour, a city run for some exercise and a pub crawl.
The whole group of us also decided to extend our stay in Dublin to the weekend as well for some fun team activities. Some of us visited the Guinness Storehouse to learn and taste the local brewing tradition. Later the entire group met up to visit Trinity College and to go to a tasting at the Whiskey Museum in downtown. Did you know that Whiskey basically means water of live? In the evening we went to the Temple Bar district for some food and a couple of beers, a great experience all around.
Returning home with a wealth of impressions and ideas
This year’s UXDX EMEA conference in Dublin was an absolute highlight for all of us. The talks, panels, forums, and workshops were all very insightful and informative and we returned home with a wealth of impressions, ideas, and techniques that we will use to improve our products even further. We especially enjoyed the workshops on the importance of customer-centricity and problem identification, two topics crucial to any product design. Overall, we had a great time and highly recommend the UXDX conference format to anyone working in product management. On top of this the conference took place in Dublin, which is a fun place to be in general.
