UX Connect 24 Program

Held in Aarhus on June 10 - 12

The conference is tailored for everyone working with design and sustainability, from beginners to experts, and features 2 packed days with a carefully curated mixture of talks, workshops, activities and world class facilitators, thought-provokers, speakers and session leads.

Program

Monday, June 10
13:00 - 17:00: Masterclass: Become a Sustainable UX Designer
17.30 - 22:00 Social event
Everyone who is in town is invited to join us for an informal dinner

Tuesday, June 11
8:30 - 9:30: Breakfast and registration
9:30 - 9:45: Welcome & Opening
by our host Jens Hofman, Vertica and our moderator Janus Boye, Boye & Co

In this opening session, Kristina Larsen from VIA University College will lead a conversation with Thorsten Jonas on the big topics in design and sustainability today.

Thorsten is a Sustainable UX and Responsible AI consultant, keynote speaker and founder of the SUX Network.

He is guiding teams and companies in crafting sustainable, responsible and ethical digital products and co-leads the UX committee for the UX chapter of the W3C Sustainable Web Design Guidelines.

As co-host of the SUX Podcast, he interviews thought leaders from around the globe and shares insights and strategies for integrating sustainability into product design processes.

His passion for the outdoors and mountaineering drives his commitment to making sustainability a fundamental aspect of user experience and digital design.

Maintaining a sustainable business requires always being able to make the right type of decisions to evolve and innovate. The aim is to stay in tune with the ever-changing reality. To have a business that remains relevant, valuable and on point with the brand, the strategy and the social responsibility effort.

At the very core of this is an ambitious and well-integrated research initiative. One that does not only limit itself to user experience assessment and prototype testing. But expand from this in a more holistic way. From routinely inspecting users to curiously investigating humans. Always remembering that technology has to stay the context. Not the substance.

That’s why human behaviour research is a cornerstone of the strategy and effort within IKEA Global Digital. Always searching for a fundamental understanding of situations, triggers, pains, thresholds, contextual factors etc.

In this opening talk I will introduce you to how we work with human behavioural research within IKEA and how we integrate it within the various parts of the digital effort done to support and evolve the IKEA co-workers.

10.50 - 11:20 Coffee & networking

Sustainability in travel is a challenging topic with its own unique challenges. Customers and accommodation partners have a limited understanding of sustainability during their trip, regulators are paying close attention to the topic as it is evolving and internal stakeholders are scattered across the organisation, which makes it difficult to align on goals and processes.

Along with Sustainability in its operations, Booking.com has made a commitment to not only offer more sustainable options to customers but also be the lead in this new intersection of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) getting a seat at the table and initiating a much-needed conversation.

This talk will be about the challenges we’ve been facing as the UX Team in Sustainability and how we overcome them. We will do this by giving a brief history of the team’s efforts from its inception to now, and highlight how we balanced UX needs with regulatory requirements while keeping our internal stakeholders aligned.

We hope to leave you with ideas applicable to your challenges around juggling UX and Sustainability in a commercial context.

12:30 - 13.30 Lunch

Personas are a great method to give different user-types a seat at the table. But how about these actors, who are not our users?

What about the actors that are not even human?

The ecosystems around us, the oceans, rivers, lakes, animal species and much more? We always have an impact on those ones as well. In negative as well as (hopefully) positive ways. So let’s find out how to consider them in our everyday design and decision processes. 

In this workshop you will develop non-human personas, get to know their benefits for creative and positive impact driven businesses, and learn how to incorporate this methodology into your daily work.

Bonus: if the weather is great, we will go outside and make it an outdoor workshop experience.

14.30 - 15.00 Coffee & networking

The Directorate of Labor and Welfare in Norway (NAV) has over 80 interdisciplinary product teams that develop digital services for users and internal employees.

aksel.nav.no is the toolbox for digital product development in NAV and consists of the design system, good practice for product development and the product blog.

The team that develops Aksel has worked as a team for 3 years and Product manager Magnus brings Design Lead Sjur with him to talk about why a design system is absolutely central to sustainability and speed and flow in such a large product organization as NAV.

They will discuss which skills a modern product designer should develop and why the collaboration between the front-end developer and the designer is absolutely critical to being able to create good products.

The European Accessibility Act (EAA) is a game changer. Discover the transformative power of the EAA and its role in shaping inclusive digital environments.

In this session, Antonia will highlight the importance of building for everyone, why designing for everyone is not just a responsibility but an opportunity, and what the many benefits of embracing accessibility actually are.

We'll cover the essentials of the EAA—why it matters, how it works, and what it entails—alongside practical insights on its impact on both B2B and B2C markets.

With a strong focus on accessibility as a foundation for outstanding UX design, this talk will inspire you to lead the charge towards more inclusive digital experiences.

Join this session for a lively discussion on the future of accessibility and how to champion it effectively. 

16.30 - 17.00 Coffee & networking

17.00 - 18.00 Lightning talks

As the name suggests, lightning talks give speakers a limited amount of time to make their presentation – no more than 10 minutes. They may or may not include slides.

Because lightning talks are brief, it requires the speaker to make their point clearly and rid the presentation of non-critical information. This, in turn, helps keep the attention of the audience. It also means many ideas can be presented in a short amount of time.

Talks:
* How to Sell Sustainable UX by Stefanie Kruse
* Domain discovery by Gavin Colborne
* How Can We build a sustainable, diverse and inclusive neighborhood - in a city for everyone? by Sarah Jarsbo
* TBD by Rob Dolan
* How 140 colleagues and 0 bosses is the key to well-being by Jens Hofman Hansen
* From fast-fashion to renewables, navigating my design journey by Dafne Cipriani
* Humans as the most sustainable resource by Anni Albæk

18.30 - 22:00 Social event

Everyone is invited to join us at Il Locale on Guldsmedgade for an informal dinner

Wednesday, June 12

6:30 Morning Run

We meet in front of Vertica for a relaxed 25 minute run

8:30 - 9:30 Breakfast and networking

9:30 - 9.45: Morning welcome - what did we learn yesterday? Plans for today

In the dynamic landscape of large-scale enterprises with 20,000 employees, effectively harnessing customer insights is pivotal for creating better solutions.

Join Cecilie as she delves into the implementation of customer journeys within a large, complex and global organisation, emphasizing the connection between customer insights and designing with passion, purpose and values.

Navigating through the challenges of dispersed data and fragmented processes, this presentation highlights the importance of consolidating information to foster transparency and efficiency across the enterprise.

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee & networking

Bringing ecological and social sustainability into projects and businesses has its ups and downs.

Join this presentation where Sandy will share a variety of examples from her own work as a sustainable UX/UI designers as well as highlight some other examples from around the globe. Learn about real life projects, best practices, different strategies and behind the scenes struggles.

As you probably already know: There is much good that comes with getting into sustainability, but also some very normal daily life challenges. Let’s talk about how to overcome those and do good for the planet.

Join this session for a joint exploration into the role of UX Design in combating food waste.

Discover how innovative design strategies can transform digital products to tackle one of our most pressing global challenges. You’ll hear from behind the scenes how Chris works with her team to design against waste.

It’s also a story of what happens when technology meets design and orchestrating seamless design operations.

12.30 - 13.30 Lunch

More details coming soon

Key lessons learned, big questions and what happens next

2.45 - 3:00 Goodbyes and see you next year!