World Usability Day Estonia 2019 conference

18 Nov 2019

Tiina Nuum

The World Usability Day Estonia 2019 conference on user experience will take place on Friday, November 22nd, in Kultuurikatel.

WUD Tallinn conference is the largest user experience design event in the Baltics and will take place for the 12th time this year. The conference starts with a joint breakfast from 8.30 am and ends with an afternoon party starting at 7 pm in the Sveta bar.

Practical workshops will take place the day before and after the conference. This year, the event brings together more than 600 designers, students, developers and those interested in innovative services.

According to Trinidad Wiseman's UX architect and conference organizer Liina Martõnjak, this is due to the growing interest in the topics covered. "The event always brings together long-time visitors, but every year you can see how the UX community continues to grow.

The conference is sold out, but there are a tickets available for some workshops. Anyone late with the purchase of a ticket will still be able to purchase admission to the main event on November 22 by registering for the Top Performers' Workshops, "she adds.

Why is there a need for a usability conference?

According to Liina, "not everyone can afford to attend international UX conferences. At the same time, it is important to keep abreast of new approaches, methods and techniques, and to get inspiration from both researchers and practitioners and to hear about a wide variety of projects.

The conference provides an opportunity to learn, communicate and get together as a community. Our goal is also to bring the topic of UX closer to the public and a larger audience, "adds Martõnjak.

What are the topics of WUD Estonia 2019?

Co-organizer Halina Mugame says that "the main theme is always usability and everything related to it. Technology also brings challenges such as security, involvement, participation, privacy, emotions. When it comes to usability, the ability to understand other people and their needs is always paramount, and current trends are well-suited to this. When compiling the program, we relied a lot on last year's feedback. According to our preferences, we invited Martina Mitz to thoroughly open the topic of UX psychology and Scott Gould to teach different ways and techniques of engagement.

Last year, Tomasz Pieta, Booking.com's leading user experience designer, received the highest rating from the participants, and this year we invited a workshop in addition to the presentation. Pietal has very diverse and long-term experience as a practitioner, and all his performances are built on real use cases. Mira Alhonsuo's presentation is also based on the case study. He talks about the design print method on the example of a specific health project.

"One of the focus topics this year is accessibility. The heart of public service designer Daniel Kotsjuba is to make both our physical living environment and the technologies we use more accessible and user-friendly. Stein Erik Skotkjerra from Siteimprove gives a small "swing" presentation on how to effectively "lose" customers with disabilities, the elderly or other special needs. There will also be presentations on the points of contact between art and technology and how the development of technology affects indigenous peoples and marginalized communities," adds Mugame.

Workshops

There will be a total of six workshops. Individual tickets for the following workshops are also available:

Go beyond the Bounce rate – design for business impact. Tomasz Pieta. 23. nov 10:00-14:00

Three maps to navigate Customers Needs. Yuri Vedenin. 21. nov 09:30-17:30

New workshop

As UX writing expert Yuval Keshtcher is unfortunately unable to attend WUD, we are offering an Eric Reis workshop on Service Design instead of his workshop. Get tickets here.

What is service design? Eric Reiss. 23. nov 10:00-17:00

According to Liina Martõnjak, "workshops can be used to learn working methods that are often applicable in very different fields, and you do not have to be a user experience designer to use them".