At the end of August, the Ionata Digital creative team spent some time diving deep into the latest thinking in user experience at the Web Directions UX Australia conference in Melbourne.
It was a fantastic couple of days, with thanks to John Allsopp and the Web Directions team for curating such a strong program of speakers and topics.
One of the highlights for us was Christopher Noessel’s talk on the risks of over-relying on AI in digital product design—and how we, as designers and developers, need to ensure we’re not unintentionally deskilling the humans using our tools.
(He humorously used the clip above to demonstrate the worst case scenario of this effect)
Another key takeaway was from Dr. Sash Milne, who spoke about bridging the gap between design teams and public sector clients, sharing valuable insights on collaboration.
The core takeaways from the two days:
- AI is here to stay – and we need to think more about how it affects how we learn and interact with each other.
- People working in different sectors have different priorities and it’s important to design with to keep those in mind when communicating.
- The core principle of the technology we’re creating should be including and connecting people.
Conferences like these are always a chance to connect with the broader UX community, share ideas, and return to our own work with fresh energy.
This year also came with something new — Martin joined the Great Question run club for a morning run around Melbourne’s beautiful Botanical Gardens before day two kicked off. Big thanks to Richardo Ramos for the photo of the run kick-off.
We’re excited to bring what we’ve learned back to our projects and clients, and to keep the conversation about the future of UX going.