This survey will help us improve our events for 2024.
You can take the survey (9 questions) here, this is anonymous.
Last update 27/01/2024 with 37 answers. We will update this page if we get more answers.
Favourite UX Glasgow event of 2023
Planet-Centered Design and Design maturity are the favourites followed by Government roles and then the UX Glasgow talks from September at the JP Morgan office and the side projects in February.
Where the session happens
Online is preferred (by 19), but people also like a mix of face to face in various settings and online (by 18 people). [You could select more than one option]
Preferred formats
The answers seem to show that people enjoy having speakers (25 answers), including first time speakers in lightning talks (12 answers) but this quote brings more nuance:
“depends on the topic really. Could imagine a series with an event consisting of 2, 3 speakers and a followed-up lean coffee or workshop”
We also have 16 and 15 answers for the panel and the chats formats.
Themes you would like for 2024
- AI was mentioned by many
- Finding a role (new grads or people who have been laid off in particular) and different UCD roles, transitioning to UX, career trends, recruitment of professionals, good sources to get into UX/SD, Mentor programmes
- Creating your brand as a UX designer
- Accessibility / Inclusive design / Responsible design / Self-care / Social impact
- Environment, Web sustainability
- Co-design / Collaboration skills
- Emerging practice and tools – best practice – future of design
- Design ops, UX strategy, project management, design leadership, policy design, working with stakeholders
- Service design
- UX writing, Content design
- Latest trends in UX, hot topics, case studies
- UX in finance and healthcare, Learning design, public sector UX
- User research / Tools / Remote vs In-person research – benefits/downsides / How to sell in-person research to money focused stakeholders
- Measuring impact, service assessments
- Design to development handover/communication
- Design systems
- Panel with 3rd sector funders about what they would see useful to fund: “I keep hearing that funders don’t fund for service design oriented ux or web dev. Funders aren’t interested in or don’t realise how it could complement on the ground work with (vulnerable) communities.”
Where you hear about our events
Mostly via LinkedIn and our newsletter (you can subscribe here) and some on our website.
One thing you like about UX Glasgow
- Great thing to look forward every month
- Sense of community
- People: lovely and open / pleasant and enjoyable vibe / New and old faces / familiar faces / Down to earth / Friendliness / welcoming
- Variety of topics, speakers and sessions
- Great place to learn, share and network! / Learn from other designers / learn about all aspects of UX
- The inclusivity – “I’m a newbie and you’re very welcoming :)” / speakers are approachable
- Relax and casual / Informal: “can contribute comfortably when able but also stick it on in the background when I have things on”
- It’s on a fixed date once a month every 1st Wednesday
- Good timing and dosage
- “Every meet-up, I’ve learned something new. No amount of Google searches or trends search or desk research would’ve made me come across this deep about topics discussed at UX Glasgow”
- Talking shop outside of a work context
- Well organised
- Meeting people in the same role but in different fields
One thing we should stop
- Being so cool 😉
- Dinner time sessions
- Not having enough time to network
- Too many offline sessions in a row (summer 2023)
- Instead of Wednesday, can we have a face to face on Friday evening?
- Only keeping once a month: we need more meet-ups
One thing we should start doing
- Open mic sessions like in standup where people share quick stories about their experience without being necessarily featured on the event invite
- More notice for lightning talks so people can come up with topics and psych themselves up
- Announce a few meet-ups in advance
- Collaboration with other meet-ups
- UX News: What is happening about ux software maybe someone important said something related to ux, or some company shared, some new ideas in design
- Not always on Wednesdays (one person mentioned they usually can’t do Wednesday)
- Series (same topics but different aspects)
- A writing group: a group of people interested in the same topic could produce some writing or blog post about that topic (we could host it on our website as well?)
- More meeeeettttupsssssss! (sic – someone is eager 😉 ) / More online sessions
- More case studies / examples of people’s projects
- More communication around our events and other UX design events in and out of the UK
- More recorded sessions / (when appropriate), recording and publicly sharing the talks part of your events – but keeping participant discussions unrecorded / If tickets are sold out for an in person event, live stream the session for others to attend remotely
- a way for the audience to contribute to the community
- Better mix of online and in person events, more face to face events, more online events….
- Make it a diversity programme
- Higher numbers of spaces if possible for face to face events
- Sound recording of speakers / panel style events
One word to define UX Glasgow
Some reflection for us as organisers
When
We have someone who said they like that it’s always on the 1st Wednesday of the month, but also people who might prefer another day and not during dinner time. We could maybe alternate day and time? or add sessions as some people seem to want more; we might not have the capacity, we are all volunteers with a day job, but we will look into it.
Recording the sessions
We have discussed this before, we do recognise it would be nice for people who can’t attend the online events to record part of them, but we feel it might change the atmosphere that many seem to enjoy and people might be less open? It puts more pressure on speakers and as the events are free, we do not pay them, so they are all doing this on their own time, voluntarily, which we really appreciate, so we try to make it as easy as possible for them.
There is also the practical aspects of it with storing/uploading the videos and ideally, we would need to have proper captions for accessibility which is time consuming.
It might still be worth revisiting the idea and discuss.
Thank you!
There is already a lot of ideas for us to explore in the answers. Keep them coming!