This free day-long online event all about accessibility and inclusive design is happening right now. You can join live, or catch up on the talks that have already happened, like the excellent talks from Russ Weakly and Manuel Matuzović.
These pictures really capture the vibe of this year’s lovely UX London event.
UX London 2023 is over.
That feels weird. I’ve spent most of this year planning for this event. It’s been something that’s coming towards me. Now it’s in the rear-view mirror. Surreal.
I’ve talked about this with other conference organisers. Some of them get the post-conference blues. It makes sense. You spend so much time pouring all your energy into something and then one day, suddenly it’s done. No wonder smart folks book some holiday time for the week after a big event.
Luckily for me, the organisation of UX London isn’t all on my shoulders. Far from it. Louise did all the hard work: planning, logistics, execution. All I had to take care of was the line-up.
Before the event, I was already feeling pretty darn happy with the line-up I had assembled. Now that the event is over, I’m feeling even happier. I was blown away.
There were some speakers on the line-up that I already knew would deliver the goods. I’ve seen them speak before. They’re a safe pair of hands. But there were other speakers I had never met before, much less seen them speak. I was pretty sure they’d be great, but I couldn’t be certain.
Well, it turned out that literally everyone was fantastic. I know, I know—that sounds highly improbable. Out of 15 people, no duds? But take it from me, every single one of them was terrific. You kinda had to be there.
Imran, Vim, Daniel, Trine, Vitaly, Mansi, Stephen, Asia, Amy, Paul, Stacey, Ignacia, Stefanie, Hannah, and Dave—thank you, thank you, thank you!
I’ve been getting a heartwarming buzz from reading how much people got out of the event…
Eliza Lawson finished her summary by saying:
So many amazing things to take away from the conference. But I think the main one for me is “I want to do that. I could do that. I’m GOING to do that…one day.”
Anastasiya Korolkova came as part of the scholarship programme:
☺️ Thank you to everyone involved in organizing this remarkable event. Your dedication and hard work created a truly remarkable and enriching experience. I am sincerely grateful and eagerly look forward to what the future holds for UX London.
Jojo Tulip finished their detailed write-up by saying:
Couldn’t recommend UX London enough, it was awesome 😎👍
Jan Henckens said:
A good mix of inspiring talks and practical workshops, top-notch organisation and cool venue meant we had a great time (and we might already want to go back next year 😀)
And I’m equally pleased that the speakers got so much out of the event…
Huge thanks to Jeremy Keith for inviting me, and the team at Clearleft for organising a great event.
UX London was amazing - full of wonderful UX folks who genuinely care about using their skills to do good.
I bring back with me relationships and ideas that go way beyond the gathering!
I’m going to bask in this post-conference glow for a little while. Then it’s time to start planning the next event…
Every week of June sees me at a web event, but in a different capacity each time.
At the end of the first full week in June, I went to CSS Day in Amsterdam as an attendee. It was thought-provoking, as always. And it was great to catch up with my front-of-the-front-end friends.
Last week I went to Pixel Pioneers in Bristol as a speaker. Fortunately I was on first so I was able to get the speaking done with and enjoy the rest of the talks. It was a lovely little event and there was yet more catching up with old friends and making new ones.
This week is the big one. UX London is happening this week. This time I’m not there as an attendee or a speaker. I’m there as the curator and host.
On the one hand, I’m a bag of nerves. I’ve been preparing for this all year and now it’s finally happening. I keep thinking of all the things that could possibly go wrong.
On the other hand, I’m ridiculously excited. I know I should probably express some modesty, but looking at the line-up I’ve assembled, I feel an enormous sense of pride. I’m genuinely thrilled at the prospect of all those great talks and workshops.
Nervous and excited. Those are the two wolves inside me right now.
If you’re going to be at UX London, I hope that you’re equally excited (and not nervous). There are actually still some last-minute tickets available if you haven’t managed to get one yet.
See you there!
It’s clear that companies don’t value CSS skills in the same way as, say Javascript — which is reflected in pay disparity, bootcamp priorities, and the lack of visibility in job descriptions. It’s not uncommon to see front end job specifications listing React, Redux, Typescript and more, with barely a passing mention of HTML and CSS, despite being core web technologies. New developers are encouraged to learn just enough CSS to get by, rather than cultivate a deep knowledge and appreciation for the language, and that’s reflected in the messy, convoluted code, riddled with bad practices, that many of us have to clear up afterwards.
I first spoke at CSS Day in Amsterdam back in 2016. Well, technically it was the HTML Day preceding CSS Day, when I talked about the A element. I spoke at CSS Day again last year, when I gave a presentation about alternative histories of styling.
One of the advantages to having spoken at the event in the past is that I’m offered a complementary ticket to the event every year. That’s an offer I’ve made the most of.
I’ve just returned from the latest iteration of CSS Day. It was, as always, excellent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but I just love the way that this event treats CSS with the respect it deserves. I always attend thinking “I know CSS”, but I always leave thinking “I learned a lot about CSS!”
The past few years have been incredibly exciting for the language. We’ve been handed feature after feature, including capabilities we were told just weren’t possible: container queries; :has; cascade layers; view transitions!
As Paul points out in his write-up, there’s been a shift in how these features feel too. In the past, the feeling was “there’s some great stuff arriving and it’ll be so cool once we’ve got browser support.” Now the feeling is finally catching up to the reality: these features are here now. If browser support for an exciting feature is still an issue, wait a few weeks.
Mind you, as Paul also points out, maybe that’s down to the decreased diversity in rendering engines. If a feature ships in Chromium, Webkit, and Gecko, then it’s universally supported. On the one hand, that’s great for developers. But on the other hand, it’s not ideal for the ecosystem of the web.
Anyway, as expected, there was a ton of mind-blowing stuff at CSS Day 2023. Most of the talks were deep dives into specific features. Those deep dives were bookended by big-picture opening and closing talks.
Manuel closed out the show by talking about he’s changing the way he writes and thinks about CSS. I think that’s a harbinger of what’s to come in the next year or so. We’ve had this wonderful burst of powerful new features over the past couple of years; I think what we’ll see next is consolidation. Understanding how these separate pieces play well together is going to be very powerful.
Heck, just exploring all the possibilities of custom properties and :has could be revolutionary. When you add in the architectural implications of cascade layers and container queries, it feels like a whole new paradigm waiting to happen.
That was the vibe of Una’s opening talk too. It was a whistle-stop tour of all the amazing features that have already landed, and some that will be with us very soon.
But Una also highlighted the heartbreaking disparity between the brilliant reality of CSS in browsers today versus how the language is perceived.
Look at almost any job posting for front-end development and you’ll see that CSS still isn’t valued as its own skill. Never mind that you could specialise in a subset of CSS—layout, animation, architecture—and provide 10× value to an organisation, the recruiters are going to play it safe and ask you if you know React.
Rachel Nabors and I were chatting about this gap between the real and perceived value of modern CSS. She astutely pointed out that CSS is kind of a victim of its own resilience. The way you wrote CSS ten years ago still works, and will continue to work. That’s by design. Yes, you can write much better, more resilient CSS today, but if those qualities aren’t valued by an organisation, then you’re casting your pearls before swine.
That said, it’s also true that the JavaScript you wrote ten years ago also continues to work today and will continue to work in the future. So why is it that devs seem downright eager to try the latest JavaScript hotness but are reluctant to use CSS that’s been stable for years?
Or perhaps that’s not an accurate representation of the JavaScript ecosystem. It may well be that the eagerness only extends to libraries and frameworks. There’s reluctance to embrace native JavaScript APIs like Proxy or web components. There’s a weird lack of trust in web standards, and an underserved faith in third-party libraries.
Una speculated that CSS needs a rebranding, like we did back in the days of CSS3, a term which didn’t have any technical meaning but helped galvinise excitement.
I’m not so sure. A successful rebranding today becomes a millstone tomorrow. Again, see CSS3.
Una finished with a call-to-action. Let’s work on building the CSS community.
She compared the number of “front-end” conferences dedicated to JavaScript—over 50 listed on one website—to the number of conferences dedicated to CSS. There’s just one. CSS Day.
It occurs to me there are two types of web conferences: know-your-craft conferences and get-ahead conferences. It’s no coincidence there are simultaneously more get-ahead conferences and more JS-framework conferences.
Una encouraged us to organise more gatherings. It doesn’t need to be a conference. It could just be a local meet-up.
I think that’s an excellent suggestion. As Manuel puts it:
My biggest takeaway: The CSS community needs you!
For me, the value of CSS Day was partly in the excellent content being presented, but it was also in the opportunity to gather with like-minded individuals and realise I’m not alone. It’s also too easy to get gaslit by the grift of “modern web development”, which seems to be built on a foundation of user-hostile priorities that don’t make sense to me—over-engineering, intertwingling of concerns, and developer experience über alles. CSS Day was a welcome reminder to fuck that noise.
With new or expanded modules for layout, typography, animation, audio (though sadly not speech) and more, it’s possible to specialise in a subset of CSS. Yet when aspects of frontend development not involving JavaScript are seen as ignorable by employers, few will get this opportunity.
Paul shares his big-picture thoughts after CSS Day:
But one CSS conference isn’t enough. This language is now so broad and deep, its implementation across browsers never more stable and complete, that opportunities to grow the community abound.
In just a couple of weeks, I’ll be heading to Bristol for Pixel Pioneers. The line-up looks really, really good …with the glaring exception of the opening talk, which I’ll be delivering. But once that’s done, I’m very much looking forward to enjoying the rest of the day’s talks.
There are still tickets available if you fancy joining me.
This will be my second time speaking at this conference. I spoke at the inaugural conference back in 2017 when I gave a talk called Evaluating Technology. This time my talk is called Declarative Design.
A few weeks back, Oliver asked me some questions about my upcoming talk. I figured I’d post my answers here…
Welcome back to Pixel Pioneers! You return with another keynote - how do you manage to stay so ever-enthusiastic about designing for the web?
Well, I’d say my enthusiasm is mixed with frustration. And that’s always been the case. Just as I’ve always found new things that excite me about the World Wide Web, there are just as many things that upset me.
But that’s okay. Both forces can be motivating. When I find myself writing a blog post or preparing a talk, the impetus might be “This is so cool! Check this out!” or it might be “This is so maddening! What’s happening!?” …or perhaps a mix of both.
But to answer your question, the World Wide Web never stays still so there’s always something to get excited about. Equally, the longer the web exists, the more sense it makes to examine the fundamental bedrock—HTML, accessibility,progressive enhancement—and see how they’re just as important as ever. And that’s also something to get excited about!
Without too many spoilers, what can we expect to take away from your talk?
I’m hoping to provide people with a lens that they can use to examine their tools, processes, and approaches to designing for the web. It’s a fairly crude lens—it divides the world into a binary split that I’ve borrowed from the world of programming; imperative and declarative languages. But it’s a surprisingly thought-provoking angle.
Along the way I’ll also be pointing out some of the incredible things that we can do with CSS now. In the past few years there’s been an explosion in capabilities.
But this won’t be a code-heavy presentation. It’s mostly about the ideas. I’ll be referencing some projects by other people that I’m very excited by.
What other web design and development tools, techniques and technologies are you currently most excited about?
Outside of the world of CSS—which is definitely where a lot of the most exciting developments are happening—I’m really interested in the View Transitions API. If it delivers on its promise, it could be a very useful nail in the coffin of uneccessary single page apps. But I’m a little nervous. Right now the implementation only works for single page apps, which makes it an incentive to use that model. I really, really hope that the multipage version ships soon.
But honestly, I probably get most excited about discovering some aspect of HTML that I wasn’t aware of. Even after all these years the language can still surprise me.
And on the flipside, what bugs you most about the web at the moment?
How much time have you got?
Seriously though, the thing that’s really bugged me for the past decade is the increasing complexity of “modern” frontend development when it isn’t driven by user needs. Yes, I’m talking about JavaScript frameworks like React and the assumption that everything should be a single page app.
Honestly, the mindset became so ubiquitous that I felt like I must be missing something. But no, the situation really has spiralled out of control, much to the detriment of end users.
Luckily we’re starting to see the pendulum swing back. The proponents of trickle-down developer convenience are having to finally admit that it’s bollocks.
I don’t care if the move back to making websites is re-labelled as “isomorphic server-rendered multi-page apps.” As long as we make sensible architectural decisions, that’s all that matters.
What’s next, Jeremy?
Right now I’m curating the line-up for this year’s UX London conference which is the week after Pixel Pioneers. As you know, conference curation is a lot of work, but it’s also very rewarding. I’m really proud of the line-up.
It’s been a while since the last season of the Clearleft podcast. I hope to remedy that soon. It takes a lot of effort to make even one episode, but again, it’s very rewarding.
Back in November of last year I announced that UX London would be returning in 2023 and that I’d be curating the line-up again. That’s where I’ve been putting a lot of my energy over the last six months.
The line-up is complete. If I step back and try to evaluate it objectively, I’ve gotta say …hot damn, that’s a fine roster of speakers!
Imran Afzal, Vimla Appadoo, Daniel Burka, Trine Falbe, Vitaly Friedman, Mansi Gupta, Stephen Hay, Asia Hoe, Amy Hupe, Paul Robert Lloyd, Stacey Mendez, Ignacia Orellana, Stefanie Posavec, Hannah Smith, and David Dylan Thomas.
Take a look at the complete schedule—a terrific mix of thought-provoking talks and practical hands-on workshops.
On day one, you’ve got these talks:
Then on day two:
And that’s just the talks! You’ve also got these four excellent workshops on both days:
That’s a lot of great stuff packed into two days!
In case you haven’t guessed, I am very excited about this year’s UX London. I would love to see you there.
As an appreciation for you putting up with my child-like excitement, I’d like to share a discount code with you. You can get 20%—that’s one fifth!—off the ticket price using the code CLEARLEFT20.
But note that the standard ticket pricing ends on Friday, May 26th so use that code in the next week to get the most bang for your buck. After that, there’ll only be last-chance tickets, which cost more.
Looking forward to seeing you at Tobacco Dock on June 22nd and 23rd!
I’m sure you’ve heard the law of the instrument: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
There’s another side to it. If you’re selling hammers, you’ll depict a world full of nails.
Recent hammers include cryptobollocks and virtual reality. It wasn’t enough for blockchains and the metaverse to be potentially useful for some situations; they staked their reputations on being utterly transformative, disrupting absolutely every facet of life.
This kind of hype is a terrible strategy in the long-term. But if you can convince enough people in the short term, you can make a killing on the stock market. In truth, the technology itself is superfluous. It’s the hype that matters. And if the hype is over-inflated enough, you can even get your critics to do your work for you, broadcasting their fears about these supposedly world-changing technologies.
You’d think we’d learn. If an industry cries wolf enough times, surely we’d become less trusting of extraordinary claims. But the tech industry continues to cry wolf—or rather, “hammer!”—at regular intervals.
The latest hammer is machine learning, usually—incorrectly—referred to as Artificial Intelligence. What makes this hype cycle particularly infuriating is that there are genuine use cases. There are some nails for this hammer. They’re just not as plentiful as the breathless hype—both positive and negative—would have you believe.
When I was hosting the DiBi conference last week, there was a little section on generative “AI” tools. Matt Garbutt covered the visual side, demoing tools like Midjourney. Scott Salisbury covered the text side, showing how you can generate code. Afterwards we had a panel discussion.
During the panel I asked some fairly straightforward questions that nobody could answer. Who owns the input (the data used by these generative tools)? Who owns the output?
On the whole, it stayed quite grounded and mercifully free of hyperbole. Both speakers were treating the current crop of technologies as tools. Everyone agreed we were on the hype cycle, probably the peak of inflated expectations, looking forward to reaching the plateau of productivity.
Scott explicitly warned people off using generative tools for production code. His advice was to stick to side projects for now.
Matt took a closer look at where these tools could fit into your day-to-day design work. Mostly it was pretty sensible, except when he suggested that there could be any merit to using these tools as a replacement for user testing. That’s a terrible idea. A classic hammer/nail mismatch.
I think I moderated the panel reasonably well, but I have one regret. I wish I had first read Baldur Bjarnason’s new book, The Intelligence Illusion. I started reading it on the train journey back from Edinburgh but it would have been perfect for the panel.
The Intelligence Illusion is very level-headed. It is neither pro- nor anti-AI. Instead it takes a pragmatic look at both the benefits and the risks of using these tools in your business.
It has excellent advice for spotting genuine nails. For example:
Generative AI has impressive capabilities for converting and modifying seemingly unstructured data, such as prose, images, and audio. Using these tools for this purpose has less copyright risk, fewer legal risks, and is less error prone than using it to generate original output.
Think about transcripts of videos or podcasts—an excellent use of this technology. As Baldur puts it:
The safest and, probably, the most productive way to use generative AI is to not use it as generative AI. Instead, use it to explain, convert, or modify.
He also says:
Prefer internal tools over externally-facing chatbots.
That chimes with what I’ve been seeing. The most interesting uses of this technology that I’ve seen involve a constrained dataset. Like the way Luke trained a language model on his own content to create a useful chat interface.
Anyway, The Intelligence Illusion is full of practical down-to-earth advice based on plenty of research backed up with copious citations. I’m only halfway through it and it’s already helped me separate the hype from the reality.
I was up in Edinburgh for the past few days at the Design It; Build It conference.
I was supposed to come back on Saturday but then the train strikes were announced so I changed my travel plans to avoid crossing a picket line, which gave me an extra day to explore Auld Reekie.
I spoke at DIBI last year so this time I was there in a different capacity. I was the host. That meant introducing the speakers and asking them questions after their talks.
I’m used to hosting events now, what with UX London and Leading Design. But I still get nervous beforehand. At least with a talk you can rehearse and practice. With hosting, it’s all about being nimble and thinking on your feet.
I had to pay extra close attention to each talk, scribbling down potential questions to ask. It’s similar to the feeling I get when I’m liveblogging talks.
There were some line-up changes and schedule adjustments along the way, but everything went super smoothly. I pride myself on running a tight ship so the timings were spot-on.
When it came to the questions, I tried to probe under the skin of each presentation. For some talks, that involved talking shop—the finer points of user research or the design process, say. But for the big-picture talks, I made sure to get each speaker to defend their position. So after Dan Makoski’s kumbaya-under-capitalism talk, I gave him a good grilling. Same with Philip Lockwood-Holmes who gave me permission beforehand to be merciless with him.
It was all quite entertaining. Alas, I think I may have put the fear of God into the other speakers who saw me channeling my inner Jeremy Paxman. But they needn’t have worried. I also lobbed some softballs. Like when I asked Levon Sharrow from Patagonia if there was such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism.
I had fun, but I was also aware of that fine line between being clever and being an asshole. Even though part of my role was to play devil’s advocate, I tried to make sure I was never punching down.
All in all, an excellent couple of days spent in good company.
Hosting was hard work, but very rewarding. I’ve come to realise it’s one of those activities that comes relatively easy to me, but it is very hard (and stressful) for others. And I’m pretty gosh-darned good at it too, false modesty bedamned.
So if you’re running an event but the thought of hosting it fills you with dread, we should talk.
I’ve managed to convince Paul to come out of the shadows for one last heist—it’s gonna be good!
(And Paul shares a discount for 20% off your UX London ticket!)
I wrote a while back about the UX London 2023 scholarship programme. Applications are still open (until May 19th) so if you know someone who you think should apply, here’s the link. As I said then:
Wondering if you should apply? It’s hard to define exactly who qualifies for a diversity scholarship, but basically, the more your life experience matches mine, the less qualified you are. If you are a fellow able-bodied middle-aged heterosexual white dude with a comfortable income, do me a favour and don’t apply. Everyone else, go for it.
The response so far has been truly amazing—so many great applicants!
And therein lies the problem. Clearleft can only afford to sponsor a limited number of people. It’s going to be very, very, very hard to have to whittle this down.
But perhaps you can help. Do you work at a company that could afford to sponsor some places? If so, please get in touch!
Just to be clear, this would be different from the usual transactional sponsorship opportunities for UX London where we offer you a package of benefits in exchange for sponsorship. In the case of diversity scholarships, all we can offer you is our undying thanks.
I’ll admit I have an ulterior motive in wanting to get as many of the applicants as possible to UX London. The applications are positively aglow with the passion and fervour of the people applying. Frankly, that’s exactly who I want to hang out with at an event.
Anyway, on the off chance that your employer might consider this investment in the future of UX, spread the word that we’d love to have other companies involved in the UX London diversity scholarship programme.
I’d like to play it cool when I announce the latest speakers for UX London 2023, like I could be all nonchalant and say, “oh yeah, did I not mention these people are also speaking…?”
But I wouldn’t be able to keep up that façade for longer than a second. The truth is I am excited to the point of skittish gigglyness about this line-up.
Look, I’ll let you explore these speakers for yourself while I try to remain calm and simply enumerate the latest additions…
The line-up is almost complete now! Just one more speaker to announce.
I highly recommend you get your UX London ticket if you haven’t already. You won’t want to miss this!
Oliver asked me some questions about my upcoming talk at Pixel Pioneers in Bristol in June. Here are my answers.
I know I’m being tease, doling out these UX London speaker announcements in batches rather than one big reveal. Indulge me in my suspense-ratcheting behaviour.
Today I’d like to unveil three speakers whose surnames start with the letter H…
Just look at how that line-up is coming together! There’ll be just one more announcement and then the roster will be complete.
But don’t wait for that. Grab your ticket now and I’ll see you in London on June 22nd and 23rd!
This is the flyer that Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau distributed at the Hypertext 91 Conference—the one where their submission was infamously rejected.
The WWW project merges the techniques of information rerieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.
The project is based on the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. lt aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.
I am positively giddy with excitement to tell you about some more speakers you can look forward to at UX London 2023:
I have more confirmed speakers but I’m going to be a tease and save them for a separate announcement soon. You can expect more of the same: smart, fabulous people with all kinds of design experience that they’re going to share with you at UX London.
But why wait for another speaker announcement? Get your ticket to UX London 2023 now!
If you’re a western white guy like me, you’re playing life on its easiest setting. If you’re also a designer, then you should get a ticket to UX London. You can probably get work to pay for it. Share this list of reasons to attend with your boss if you have to.
If, on the other hand, you don’t benefit from the same level of privilege as me, you might still be able to attend UX London 2023. We’re running a scholarship programme.
“We” in this case is Clearleft. But as we also need to at least break even on this event, there are only a limited number of scholarship spots available.
Now, if your company were in a position to pony up some moolah to sponsor more diversity scholarship places, we would dearly love to hear from you—get in touch!
If you think you might qualify for a diversity scholarship, fill in this form before May 19th. We’ll then notify you by May 26th, whether you application is successful or not. And if you’re worried about the additional costs of travel and accommodation, I’m sure we can figure something out.
Wondering if you should apply? It’s hard to define exactly who qualifies for a diversity scholarship, but basically, the more your life experience matches mine, the less qualified you are. If you are a fellow able-bodied middle-aged heterosexual white dude with a comfortable income, do me a favour and don’t apply. Everyone else, go for it.
I’ve been redesigning UX London. I don’t mean the website. I mean the event itself.
Don’t worry, it’s nothing too radical. It’s not like we’re changing the focus of the event, which remains a nerdfest for all things design-related.
But there are plenty of other opportunities for tweaking a conference like this: the format, the timings, the location.
For 2023 we’re not changing the location. Tobacco Dock worked out well for last year’s event, although it is very expensive (then again, so is anywhere decent in London). Last year there were a lot of unknowns in play because it was our first time using the venue. It feels good that this year we don’t have to go through quite as much uncertainty.
The most obvious change to UX London this year is the length. The event will last for two days instead of three.
Running a three-day event was a lot of work, so this helps relieve the pressure. It was also asking a lot of attendees. That’s why we also offered one-day tickets. For the people who couldn’t commit to three days at a conference, there was the option to pick and choose.
But that brought its own issues. Instead of everyone having the same shared experience, the audience was a bit fractured.
Now that we’ve slimmed it down to two days, we’re selling the same two-day tickets for everyone. No more single-day tickets; no more partial attendance. Judging by the way ticket sales have been going, this is a very welcome move.
(Even before announcing any speakers, we had already sold a healthy amount of tickets. That’s probably testament to the great reputation that UX London has built up over the years. I need to make sure I don’t squander that good will. No pressure.)
On the subject of everyone having a shared experience, there’s something about the format of UX London that’s bothered me for a while…
Each day is split into two halves. In the morning, you’ve got inspirational talks. That’s one single track. Then in the afternoon, you’ve got hands-on practical workshops. They happen in parallel.
That makes for a great mix, but the one downside is that the day ends with the audience split across the different workshops.
This year I’m tweaking the format slightly. We’ll still have a single track of talks in the morning followed by multiple workshops in the afternoon, but I’m shortening the workshop length slightly to fit in one last talk at the end of the day. That way, everybody will come back together again after their workshops to participate in a shared experience.
The audience will converge at the beginning of the day, diverge in the afternoon, and this time we’ll converge again at day’s end.
The workshops are a big part of what makes UX London stand out. But they also pose a big design challenge. How do you ensure that everyone gets to attend the workshops they want?
We could make people pick their workshops in advance. But then you end up with the office Christmas dinner party problem—you know the one; everyone has to choose their meal way in advance, and then on the day, no one remembers what they ordered.
Besides, if we make people choose in advance, it’s not fair on people who buy their ticket close to the event.
In the end, using a first-come, first-served strategy on the day has worked out best. But it’s not ideal. You could miss out on attending your first choice of workshop if you’re not fast enough.
This year we’re trying something new. Each afternoon there’ll be a choice of workshops, as always. But this time, it’ll be the same workshops on both days. That way, every attendee gets a second chance to get to the workshops they want. And it’ll help reduce the FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out. It still won’t be possible to attend all the workshops without cloning yourself, but this way, you get to attend half of them.
To recap, here’s the redesigned format for UX London 2023:
The line-up is coming together nicely. I’ve got more confirmed speakers, who I don’t want to reveal just yet. But trust me, you won’t want to miss this!
Oh, and you should probably grab your ticket this week if you haven’t already: early-bird pricing ends on midnight on Friday, February 24th.