I dipped my toe into the UX conference world for the first time the other week, stepping out from the manifesto fold for the day to attend UX London 2025’s discovery day. Here are the points that stuck with me:
Combat research cynicism with transparency and solid planning
Despite being the backbone of my work in the UX space, it’s hard to deny that research is under increasing pressure. Lack of stakeholder buy-in, squeezed budgets and an increasing AI and ‘bought’ feedback presence across the board is leading to an erosion of trust in the design research space. To mitigate this, we need to revisit the basics and shore up the foundations. Rigour in the initial recruitment phase of research; being honest and open about the goals of the project; taking steps to maximise each participant's possible contribution to the study as well as careful and diligent analysis can all help. Research shouldn’t be seen as a means to an end; transparency within the process is an important part of building back any trust that might be wavering.
You never know what someone is going through when they encounter your content
It doesn’t take a conference recap to tell you that stress is a) present in everyone’s lives and b) affects mental processing power. As designers, we can’t anticipate or predict the mental state of a user, but we can design for it. With a user’s cognitive load increasing every 100 words per page, against a backdrop of already only reading 20% of content - Kelly Johnson’s “Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)” has never been more relevant. Plain language, content guidelines including terminology to use and avoid and putting your most important content towards the beginning can help the user get what they need from your content. Whether your user is reading implicitly emotionally-charged content e.g. explaining the process of divorce, to non emotionally-charged content but a user in a stressed state e.g. a parent with children crying in the background, keeping it simple can only help your user decipher your content.
Future thinking can help to design through the hype
AI is here, loud and impossible to ignore, but it’s not the first innovation to have an impact on UX work or the wider techsphere. It’s important to look critically at newcomer techniques and technologies; the future isn’t just a product of your personal opinion as an individual. An impact/plausibility lens can help assess what to take forward and work with and what to leave for now, whilst remaining open to all possibilities and experimenting to stay responsive in a changing space.
Data can be a powerful story teller when reimagined
It can be tempting to relegate data to the realm of boring dashboards and graphs, but that doesn’t have to be the case. With a sprinkle of well thought out creativity and experimentation with data presentation (check out Ferdio’s https://100.datavizproject.com/ for inspiration) datasets can bring the subject to life and evoke powerful emotions. Consider your data, your audience and the story you are highlighting when brainstorming. This session made me really hungry to get my hands on a big dataset and has reignited my desire in using data to tell stories that connect — not just convince.
For me, the day was a great reminder of the power of research and sparked many ideas of how I might strive for that next level of rigour, transparency and holistic view as well as creativity across my work.
With thanks to Jeremy Keith and the Clearleft team, Veronica Naguib, Kaitlin D’Avella, Sayani Mitra, Rachel Rosenson, Valentina D’Efilippo and Paula Zuccotti.