UXDX 2017 Conference - Our Experience

Earlier this month we attended the UXDX 2017 Conference in the RDS. It was our first time attending UXDX and, I'm glad to say, it did not disappoint. With top notch international speakers and a diverse range of topics to suit both designers and developers, it made for an inspiring day.

The sessions were split across two stages - the UX (User Experience) stage and the DX (Developer Experience) stage. The event was very well managed, so we were able to mix and match the sessions we were interested in across both stages throughout the day. One of the key goals for the conference was to give designers and developers a better understanding of each other's work and enable them to collaborate more closely - something worth aiming for!

Empowering Autonomous Teams from the Top Down

The day kicked off with a keynote session on "Empowering Autonomous Teams from the Top Down" from Bryan Dove, the CTO of Skyscanner. Bryan had lots of good advice to offer for onboarding new team members. For example, don't dump them on some new big project. Partner them with someone else on an existing project, and enable them to succeed early by giving them more discrete goals.

Bryan also advocated trusting people, and not attempting to solve problems for them. Give them the power and initiative to do so themselves and the rewards for them, and the company, will be even greater. This is something that we can relate to strongly here at Annertech.

Designing Voice Driven Experiences

Next up was an inspiring session on the future of voice driven products by Noelle LaCharite, a Senior Technical Program Manager at Amazon. With more players entering the market, the user experience of these products is becoming more and more important. Her session hit home with a key point that with voice driven products starting to become more popular, we're no longer designing or developing for the screen any more. It sounds like the next five, ten years will be both very exciting and challenging indeed!

Using Psychology Processes for Better Team Collaboration

Cheryl Kennedy, Director of Digital Design, Data & Services at Barclaycard, spoke about agile UX teams amongst other things. One of the key take aways here was that designers need to look beyond design and learn commercial skills to better understand business goals. As designers, you need to include and understand your internal business stakeholders, and to do your research - as what works for one person, won't necessarily work for another.

She also had these three tips to improve communication within your teams:

1. Try out different things - be brave and take risks
2. Give continuous feedback - early and constant feedback is better and less costly in the long run
3. Don't be precious - if the design doesn't work, it doesn't work. Don't get offended. Adapt and move on.

Designing Microservice Architectures

The CTO of metsitaba, Richard Rodger, gave an interesting session on microservice architectures. They can be thought of a bit like lego, uniform in structure, which fit in neatly with each other, with expected inputs and outputs. They offer a number of benefits, including a reduction in technical debt and removing the need for major refactoring - instead just throw away the bit of code that is obsolete and replace it with your new "lego brick". With the same expected inputs and outputs, it should be a straightforward replacement.

Enhancing the Processes of Test Driven Development

A session highlighting the benefits of test driven development (TDD) was up next, with Nik Crabtree from ASOS. TDD is something we advocate at Annertech, particularly on the more complex or involved projects. Nik highlighted a number of benefits of the TDD approach, including how it creates shared ownership of the code, and that everyone works together to get it to the finish line - there are no heroes. 

Startup Spotlight: Closing the Gap from Design to Code: Transforming Designs into Code

This is one of the sessions we made sure to catch. Tony Beltramelli, CEO of UIzard spoke on a subject close to our hearts - essentially making the transition from design to implementation much more seamless. He explained how creating Photoshop designs provides a less than ideal experience for the client signing-off on them, and demonstrated how their pix2code prototype can help in the faster creation of HTML based designs. This is one startup to keep an eye on!

To close...

There were lots of excellent talks at this event, and while we could not attend them all, the underlying theme we heard from talking to other attendees was just how the sessions were all of such high quality. Attending events like these allows us to grow as developers and designers, to get new ideas, and to learn from others. 

We learned a great deal at UXDX, both from speakers and attendees, and have come away feeling inspired. Thanks to all those involved in organising UXDX 2017 - see you next year!