27-28 August, ACMI, Melbourne
It takes a fair bit to get me out of my Corrimal hideaway these days, let alone fly to Melbourne. But when one of my favourite conferences (and a former employer), UX Australia, makes a post-Covid comeback after five years with the assistance of the best conference organisers in the country (and another former employer), Web Directions, there was simply no way I was not going to be there.
We used to call UX Australia where the “user experience family” came together, while the big Web Directions end of year conference was the “gathering of the tribes”. Both of those labels could be applied to this conference, with a lot of personal reunions and a great mix of web tech folks.
UXA’s Steve Baty showed he’s lost none of his curatorial skills but, as luck would have it, he was under doctor’s orders not to fly from Sydney (kind of ironic for the man nicknamed Doc), so WD head honcho John Allsopp had to step in as conference host, a role he’s at least familiar with given his decades of experience with his own conferences.
The venue was the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), which was fitting not only for its technological capabilities and magnificently raked theatre with very comfy seats, but also because Director & CEO Seb Chan gave a fantastic Web Directions presentation in 2015 about his time at Cooper Hewitt in New York just before he joined ACMI – and now here he is running the joint.
And the presentations?
I’ll make two points in advance.
- I’ve always appreciated that both UX Australia and Web Directions conferences pay ample attention to digital accessibility. That can mean talks that focus specifically on accessible and inclusive design (of which there several in this event), but also that all talks have an understanding of the importance of accessibility. If anything, this has increased over the years, building to that desired sense that accessibility is just part of the job for designers and anyone involved in web tech.
- Many presenters referred to other presentations at the conference, creating a sense of a cohesive event with many parts rather than just a series of individual talks. This is a very good thing. Possibly the best direct acknowledgement of this was when Erietta Sapounakis ended her talk with a slide that said “That’s a topic for another talk”, and added, “although Stephanie may just have given that talk.” Delightful.
Session 1
Over-reliance and deskilling: 2 long-term AI problems (and what designers can do about it)
Christopher Noessel, Design Principal
Chris blew me away with his 2019 UX Australia talk on agentive technology, so it’s no surprise he did it again with this keynote. Rather than broad opprobrium or approbation of artificial intelligence, he dived deep into two contextual issues. What happens when we believe everything AI tells us and start to depend on it, ignoring the risk that brings, and do we also risk deskilling web tech practitioners by handing work over to AI? Insightful, funny (Beigey!?), a little scary, a little optimistic, and it came with a bonus proper explanation of the Luddites.
Session 2
(Re)Designing Research: How AI is shaping research practices
Stephanie Moss, Head of Design and Research Operations, SEEK
AI was bound to be a major theme of this conference and UX Australia has always had an abiding interest in UX Research – this talk brought the two together. Stephanie gave a very pragmatic account of how AI can support effective research without leading designers astray if the right checks and balances are put in place.
The Continuous Discovery paradox: rigour vs. agility
Erietta Sapounakis, Head of UX/Product Design, Stan
If you adapt traditional pre-development user research into an agile, reactive process throughout product development, you end up with Continuous Discovery. But does that threaten the rigour of research done in advance, and does it risk weakening and devaluing the product development process? And is the extra time (and money) it takes make it worthwhile or even feasible? Erietta covered a pilot program to explore whether it might be right for everyone (spoiler alert: it depends).
Beyond the Method: Ethnography as a Mindset
Bec Purser, Senior Manager Service Design, Transport for New South Wales and Sophie Goodman, Freelance Anthropologist
For designers, ethnography – the study of people in the context of their cultures and social contexts – offers a way of thinking that focuses on the lived experience of people and goes deeper than the snapshots of traditional user research. Bec and Sophie’s enthusiasm shone through this talk on a way of being more inclusive and understanding of human lives.
Translating Chaos: How I Bridge Ambiguity and Bureaucracy
Sash Milne, Strategic Designer
One of the barriers that designers often have to deal with is how to get innovative ideas adopted by organisations rooted in systems and bureaucracies, particularly in government and public service. Sash proposes a way of winning the trust of decision-makers without threatening the structures they depend on.
Session 3
Designing for Spatial Computing & the Apple Vision Pro
Oliver Weidlich, Director of Design & Innovation, Contxtual
When Apple launched its Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality device, the Vision Pro, it refused to call it a headset, instead calling it a “spatial computer”. This, the steep purchase price and unfulfilled consumer expectations may have contributed to it being deemed a flop. However, Oliver has continued to explore its potential as a way of combining the physical and the digital – maybe there is something in spatial computing, after all. Certainly, his demonstration of using the Apple Vision Pro as an information tool was convincing, not least the app his company built, Day Ahead, essentially a 3D digital daily calendar.
Designing for Every Australian: Trauma-Informed and Emotionally Accessible Digital Experiences
Taryn D’Souza, Principal UX & Service Design Consultant
Discussions of accessible design rarely extend to consideration of mental health, and even less to trauma. Yet these are very real issues that present very real barriers to people’s participation in society. Taryn explored the role of design in removing these barriers, bringing to it her experience and understanding of youth bullying, especially in remote communities.
Practical tips to integrate inclusive design into your everyday work
Viv Dinh, Principal Product Designer
To be fair, this session was not aimed at me, experienced as I am in understanding digital accessibility issues and implementing ways of addressing them. It was aimed at designers who might have only thought about accessibility as an abstract concept and don’t know how to manage them at a practical level. Still, I was dismayed at some of the ideas suggested and the lack of real understanding: aria-label is not a band-aid.
Scaling Design in Healthcare SaaS: Dealing with the past, Building for the Future
Lucas Arundell, General Manager of Design & Customer Research, Magentus
Healthcare software, especially on mobile, is already huge and only going to get bigger. The role of human-centred design becomes even more critical when you consider the situation its users are in and the imperative for it to understand and meet their needs. Lucas effectively took us through the issues, including supporting legacy products (and attitudes) and the potential role for AI.
Session 4
Auslan and Access in UX
Shawn Phua, Founder, Auslanism
Shawn is profoundly Deaf and delivered his presentation in Auslan, Australian sign language, with an interpreter – effectively unseen by the audience – voicing his talk. Visually compelling, engaging, and often very funny, he explained the role of Auslan in the lives of Deaf people, the need to embed it in design considerations, and why it matters. It reminded me of my time with the Theatre of the Deaf and how fascinated hearing people are with deaf communication (and also made me aware that the Auslan I know is 40 years out of date).
Designing Beyond Visibility: Neurodivergent Perspectives and the Hidden Layers of UX
Matija Squire, Director, Untapped Talent
Another presenter with lived experience, Tia is neurodivergent and drew directly on her own life to draw us into the lives of people with hidden disabilities like autism and ADHD. Again, the focus was on how inclusive design must take into account all lived experience to be truly inclusive. Tia was the opposite of the stereotypical hoodied, angst-ridden teenager, celebrating her own difference, and delivering a lively and insightful talk.
At the end of the first day, we were treated to a happy hour (and a half) of drinks, snacks, and lots (!) of chat: catching up with old friends and colleagues, and making new connections.
Session 5
Fireside Chat
Seb Chan, CEO, ACMI
I’ve already mentioned Seb and it was a delight to hear how he has changed the face of museums in Australia (and elsewhere) through his interactive, design-oriented approach to the user experience. The fact that his old friend John Allsopp had to stand in for the originally intended host only enhanced the chat, a great start to the second day.
Session 6
Inclusive design for audiences with alcohol and other drug challenges
Ally Tutkaluk, UX and Digital Specialist, Lives Lived Well/Queensland University of Technology
The exploration of inclusive design continues, this time with Ally drawing attention to the needs of people with mental health issues as the result of substance abuse. Again, the increasingly important role of the digital world is not matched by the diversity of all users’ needs.
Designing for people who’ve been let down before
Billie-Mae Kennedy, Head of Design, Pragma Partners
What a great title! Mae works with some of the most vulnerable and emotionally damaged people in society, and emphasised the role of respectful research in building trust and informing the design of government and other services. Emotional safety for all involved is critical.
Designing for belonging: finding and keeping close people in the modern world
Ryan Hubbard, Director, Hinterland Lab
Hinterland works to contribute to a society built on wisdom, justice, and belonging by taking an interdisciplinary approach grounded in human-centred design and systems thinking. Ryan drew on some recurring factors like trust, vulnerability, need, belonging, communication, support, and – critically – the role of the experience designer in treating those as concrete and meaningful concepts.
The Death of the User: UX in a Fully Personalised World
Tori Sanderson, Managing Director, Avian
One of the positives mentioned in relation to AI is its potential to customise digital experiences individually to each and every user. In such a hyper-personalised world, what happens to design patterns, shared experiences, or even the concept of “the user” as opposed to “a user”? Tori explored what all this means for the future of UX research and design.
Session 7
Beyond User Needs: Speaking the Language of Business to Drive Decisions
Ruth Ellison, Research Director, Propel Design
Drawing on years of experience with UX, design and digital transformation in government and non-government contexts, Ruth presented a pragmatic approach to building a business case for innovative design, based on acquiring and conveying a mindset that the designer is a partner to the business executive, working together to achieve the organisation’s aims and objectives.
LLMs in government service design
Harry Court, UX Designer, myLot
Harry gave a fascinating account of how designing with large language models used by AI can simplify and accelerate the processes by which individuals deal with government services. Using pragmatic examples like getting building permissions, he showed how such processes can be transformed from tedious form filling to intuitive question answering, easing the burden on both government and users.
From Governance to Ground: Service Design Without Power
Dr Anita Gisch, Managing Director, Gisch Consulting
Coming from a background as an anthropologist, Anita focused on making organisational change through service design when you’re not in a position of authority. Challenging some traditional ideas like “Change comes from the top”, Anita offered practical examples of identifying opportunities for change from the ground up, winning the trust of the people who would be affected by change, and inviting people to step through the door of change.
How Futures Design practices can strengthen research output
Sheree Hannah, Design Director, Designit
As Sheree explained, Futures Design is a design-led approach to exploring, imagining, and preparing for multiple possible futures. It allows for spotting design innovations that otherwise might be lost, and incorporating them into a plan for future change. It’s not about predicting the future but about recognising the signals that might influence the future, identifying the possible.
Session 8
Lessons from Designing for Small Communities
Kiri James, Business Designer and founder, Mimosa Partners
Kiri drew on her personal experience living in a small community in Margaret River, Western Australia, to tease out what business designers can learn from the way such communities operate, how they bring people together to create an intimate mutual understanding that can have a positive influence on organisational infrastructure and accountability.
Soft Power: Designing the Infrastructure of Care
Dr. Lena Belin, Strategic Design Advisor
In a talk that in many ways summed up a lot of the foregoing presentations (and referred to may of the key words used: inclusion, trust, vulnerability), Lena proposed that the UX designer’s recognition of the most human traits can – and, perhaps, must – inform service delivery, from digital to in person. The soft power of understanding that care is not a weakness but a fundamental infrastructure in itself can lead designers to be agents of positive change, a role that comes from their full understanding of what user experience means. A terrific closing address.
Often, conferences end with “see you next year”, and that’s it. On this occasion, however, a couple of enterprising OZeWAI members organised a community meeting of “A11y Allies” at a nearby pub, to kick on with errr … networking. A wonderful way to end what was a marvellous return by UX Australia to the conference calendar.
If this has made you wish you had been there, you should seriously consider subscribing to Web Directions’ Conffab, which will let you watch recordings of all these talks plus a back catalogue of Web Directions conferences. Honestly, it’s an excellent professional development investment.