UX in Education - Challenges and Opportunities

About the Event

Join us at our inaugural conference, bringing together user-centered professionals working in education for a day of thought-provoking talks, interactive sessions and networking.

Interested in speaking or running an interactive session? Our call for speakers is now open, you can complete this online form.

Ideas of topics are below. If you would like an informal chat about your idea, contact emma.horrell@ed.ac.uk 

Since we formed in 2021, our UCISA UX community has grown online, we have come together in virtual sessions to talk about our work (and at times, share in group therapy!). It’s now time to meet in-person to share more ideas, make more connections and learn more from each other. This UX conference is different to other UX conferences - it has a specific focus on the adoption and application of user-centred approaches and practices in education, with consideration of the specific challenges and opportunities that exist and characteristics of the sector we work in. If you’ve ever grappled with student-journey mapping, academic engagement and getting buy-in for user research to improve university-wide services, then this is the conference for you!

The conference will explore a range of themes, including:

• Successes and failures - honest case studies presented by UX practitioners in education.
• Sessions by experts in the field to inspire and invigorate your approach to UX in your institution.
• Ideas for techniques and approaches to embed user-centered design into your institutional culture.

We are looking for speakers to share experiences from the topics below:

• Success, failure and learning stories – particularly on shared issues in education such as: learning and teaching workflows, timetabling and student support services.
• Deep-dives into application of particular UX techniques - masterclasses, practical hands-on sessions, workshops.
• Researching and designing inclusive and accessible experiences for staff and students.
• Striving for consistency - standardised approaches, design systems.
• Telling UX stories - explaining our craft to convince hearts and minds. Making meaningful use of data and metrics to show impact.
• Scaling up UX - from individual projects and digital transformation initiatives to wider systems, and services. Prioritising areas to research and embedding UX practices as standard.
• Service Design approaches - breaking down silos to understand how services are experienced and design them accordingly.
• Participatory design – how to involve staff and students in co-designing services, products and systems.
• Applying UX principles to vendor-supplied products and services - starting with procurement.

If you or a colleague have an idea in mind for presentations or workshops that covers one of these themes, please submit a summary of the proposed presentation via this online form. The deadline: for submission is Friday, 17 May 2024