Software development and testing company DVT recently sponsored the UX South Africa Conference (#UXJHB18) which took place on 9 to 11 May in Johannesburg.
The annual event brings together practitioners, professionals, and industry experts wanting to explore the current state of user experience (UX), user-centred design (UCD) and human-centred design (HCD).
This year’s three-day conference saw approximately 130 user experience practitioners attend one day of practical workshops followed by two days of presentations by industry experts.
“UX South Africa is extremely proud to partner with DVT for UXSA Johannesburg,” says conference co-organiser Theo Sauls, “The South African UX community has gained a lot of traction and is promoting local speakers to help improve designing skills and knowledge.”
Ighsaan Robinson and Sauls co-organised UX Craft South Africa which will be their 8th successful User Experience Conference. They also started the UX Masterclass Community in Cape Town which has over 650 members. Other conferences organised by Sauls include PHP South Africa, Java Cloud Africa, UXD Healthcare UK and co-organising Blockchain Africa.
“We’re pleased to have been able to give UX South Africa our support for this year’s conference. The organisers have gone a long way to building up the community around UX and related services in South Africa,” says DVT’s Chris Dawson, practice head: UX/UI Services, “It’s great to see a conference with so many local speakers who give their insight into the unique opportunities and challenges in design.”
Dawson’s presentation on day two of the event focused on collaboration with developers in product design and was titled; ‘Have you high fived your developer lately?’.
“As tech workers, we [designers] sometimes find ourselves working in isolation from those who are responsible for taking our ideas and turning them into reality,” says Dawson, “It may be time to reflect and have a look at how collaboration plays into our successes and failures in product design.”
Tim Caynes, principal designer at Foolproof and keynote speaker, discussed how artificial intelligence in healthcare could help improve the patient experience. “The aim is to improve patient experiences, understand human beings and be empathetic. All we’re trying to do is close the empathy gap,” states Caynes.
Some of the UX trends raised at the event included a strong focus on empathy and design, understanding your users, transforming the customer experience, and designing for emotion (emotion centred design).
According to Sauls, the next UX conference will take place in Cape Town on the 21st to 23rd November. “We will be announcing the Call for Papers for speakers soon. Tickets for Cape Town tend to sell out pretty fast, so we’re looking forward to another successful event.”