A usability conference

My organization held a usability conference for teams in Bangalore. The goal was to push our engineers to be more UX-minded, equip them with knowledge and resources, and provide an opportunity to practice.

The sentiment that all of the leadership conveyed was that we are at an inflection point in our org and product. What I expressed to the team was that, our strong engineering culture has done us well up to this point, and we are going to get to the next level by focusing on user experience. A typical narrative for a mature enterprise product, but exciting to be a part of, nonetheless.

This half-day event brought together thirty engineers and a handful of UX designers. We heard talks from leaders directed at engineers who are earlier in their journey of being human-centered and product minded. We addressed topics like, What is UX?, A Developer's View of UX, usability heuristics (I gave this one—Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics are still relevant after thirty years), design systems, Text Is the UI, and more.

The second half of the conference was a practicum. Critique a particular part of our UI and ideate on improvements. (I went to bed, so I didn't participate in this portion).

I'm happy to see this earnest step towards a empowered product development teams. A year ago, I started a UX guild, drawing from the vision from our senior leadership to be more product-minded across the business. Since that time, we've published a fresh set of personas, expanded our research team, created a new design system, hired a Chief Design Officer. The momentum has continued to build.

This transformation will take years, but events like this show the progress we've made and provide another stepping stone on that path we are laying.