AMUSE Conference in Budapest

In October Kristof, Kolja and me visited the AMUSE conference in Budapest. First UX conference for all of us! We went to stay for a whole week and used the first days for a ‘User Interface Retreat’ in our apartment.

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The AMUSE partners with the CRUNCH conference about big data and shares a lot of the infrastructure like catering. As a visitor of either of those conferences you could visit the other one. We used the chance to watch a talk by Andrea Burbank about A/B Testing.

In my opinion, some of the talks where not that convincing – shallow, full of buzzwords but lacking meaningful content. I came here to learn about UX, I do not need a motivational talk encouraging me to do it. I want guidance, case studies and new trends. Luckily, there also were really good talks. Here are the ones we enjoyed most:

Cennydd Bowles: The ethical designer

A little bit of a warning: there is politics in this talk.

Abstract talk about ethics of designing things, how you unavoidably change the world while designing stuff. Well done without getting too emotional or trivial. (link to video)

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Bill Selman: Escaping homophily

Our main product is Firefox, you probably used to use it.

Very hands on how Mozilla went out into the wild to research who is using Firefox, how and why. (link to video)

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Toby Sterrett: Making dog food part of your balanced diet

I always hated finance and money and things like that.

Telling his story on how he helped to develop the modern banking experience for the now successful online bank Simple. (link to video)

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Joel Marsh: UX: Design as a science

All design is creative. Not all creativity is design.

He tends to quote himself a lot but there are still nice takeaways. (link to video)

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Summary

The whole thing was very well-organized, the moderator Tom Illmensee did a very good job and even played with his blues band on stage in the evening. We did have a nice time and would recommend the AMUSE conference to anyone interested in UX. Plus, Budapest in autumn is really beautiful.

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