About

UX Australia 2009 is Australia’s premier user experience design conference, with inspiring and practical presentations, covering a range of topics about how to design great experiences for people.

A day of pre-conference workshops will focus on practical skills to help you get started, learn new techniques and explore ideas in detail. Two days of conference presentations will provide practical skills to take away, inspire you for your next project, stretch your knowledge in a new direction or show how someone in a different field has tackled a problem just like yours.

The conference will encompass many aspects of user experience design. It will include core topics such as information architecture, interaction design, information design, content, visual design & strategy. In future years we also hope to have presentations about industrial design, exhibition design, urban design and architecture.

An important part of UX Australia is that it is a community conference. Conference speakers are drawn from the community and are chosen by the community. The conference isn’t just about the presentations, but about meeting up, spending time talking to each other and hanging out. The conference will include planned social aspects and leave plenty of flexibility too.

About user experience design

User experience design is the deliberate creation of an experience that a person has with something – with a website, a computer application, a gadget or a space – to deliver value to that person, and through them, to the business.

User experience design is highly multi-disciplinary and holistic. It is rarely the responsibility of one person – so much contributes to the overall experience that it is the responsibility of whole teams, and often the users of the product as well.

For more about user experience design:

  • A definition of user experience design
  • 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

Who should attend

If you are in a role where your recommendations or decisions ultimately affect the way a person experiences your product, this conference is you. You might be called one of the following, or manage them:

  • User experience designer
  • Experience architect
  • User-centred designer
  • Usability engineer
  • Information architect
  • Interaction designer
  • Interface designer
  • Writer

Or you may be a:

  • Graphic designer
  • Brand strategist
  • Market researcher
  • Communications specialist
  • Business analyst
  • Front-end website developer
  • Project manager
  • Product manager
  • Industrial designer
  • Exhibition designer

Why we are doing this

There are some great conferences in Australia that touch on user experience design, usually in another context like web design, web development, or business analysis. But there is no single conference dedicated specifically to user experience design or for user experience practitioners. We think there is value in holding a conference for user experience and related fields – to provide a way to get together, and to generate material that will help us and designers who come after us.

We made a decision to have this as a proposal-based conference instead of one based on invited speakers only. We want to provide a place for both experienced speakers and new presenters to share their ideas and work.

How we will run it

As a user experience conference, it is most important that the conference itself provides a great experience. Based on our time at conferences and by talking to people about what they love and hate about conferences, we’ve already made some decisions about the event experience – making sure we have wireless internet, the venue has good places to meet and hang out, getting there is easy and that you can easily walk to dinner.

As we work through the planning process & millions of little decisions, we’ll get you involved and see what you think. We’ll get you to help with the selection of the conference content and ask you to help arrange social events & things that matter most to you. We’ll be on the look-out for interesting ways to make this the most awesome conference you’ll attend all year, and ways to extend it beyond the conference itself.

Who’s responsible

UX Australia 2009 is proudly run by the team at UX Events.