UXI20 Wrapped up!
A week into a brand new year and it’s already been quite eventful. A flurry of memes already out there describing what a start it has been to this year. It’s been a great start for us though at UMO and UXI! If you have been following us closely you would have observed that the last newsletter we sent in the series of #UXI20 said ‘wrapping up’ instead of ‘wrapped up!’ I did explain why we still called it ‘wrapping up’ in that issue, you can check it out at @umodesign’s medium publication or subscribe at news.umo.design
Now, let’s take a quick look back and wrap up UXI20!
UXI20, in many ways was one of the first — surely a very first in hosting a full fledged virtual conference! It was not an easy call for us to make! Like most brilliant ideas this didn’t happen all of a sudden. Did you know after we wrapped up UXI19 in late 2019, we decided to start planning UXI20 from January itself. We had such huge plans! The things we imagined for 2020 were really next level. Unfortunately, we all know what happened. COVID hit us, hit us hard. All the amazing things we dreamed up went down the drain! Nevertheless, we acted quickly and decided that we will not have a physical conference this year. It was a hard decision, we were breaking a 15 year old tradition in many ways of not having a UXI conference. Man, looking back it was such a hard call. Our team is scattered across the globe and we all miss seeing each other so damn much.
Alright, enough back story! Let’s dive in.
UXI20 gets a new look
The first thing if you might have noticed is the new branding and visual identity! This was designed to indicate an all new beginning for UX India. After all it’s done 15 years and no better time for an overhaul. Especially as we broke all barriers and created an all new virtual conference!
This time among many one of the biggest changes to the conference was a 6 day schedule instead of our usual 3 day. We reduced the hours to nearly 4 hours a day in the evenings, IST. Talking about schedule we decided not to have the famous workshops since we felt it might not be as immersive as we wanted it to be doing it online. Good news is that we are offering workshops in a more immersive means under the UMO Excel program — Introducing Masterclasses and certification programs by UMO Design School! 4 week immersive program for professionals taught by leading design experts from across the globe and 24 week full fledged design certification courses. Enrol now! By the way, we recently launched UMO Design School at UXI20 .Great response so far thanks to you!
Other cool stuff which happened at UXI20!
Live Q&A
We thoroughly enjoyed hosting live Q&A sessions the most. We introduced this to bring in real time conference experience virtual where you bump into speakers in the lobby and chat with them for a few mins. It sure felt real good to see speakers in real time! Still feels surreal that we couldn’t meet them this year like we do every year.
As it turns out the chat section at UXI20 happened to be a great place to hang out. Many stimulating conversations happened there with speakers and audience interacting, answering questions and so much more!
Experience India
This is what you get when a bunch of designers get together and come up with ideas. Experience India was created to encourage and showcase Indian talent. This year’s UXI20 is not just about talks on design. As always, we had something interesting planned for you!
Experience India as the name suggests will give you a taste and glimpse of the Indian Culture, tradition, art forms and cuisine. As designers crafting experiences for others, we believe there’s a lot of learn and get inspired from our surroundings. And Indian culture like many has fascinating roots with a kaleidoscopic variety and rich cultural heritage.
We hope you were able to kick back and take in the wonders of India expressed by some very talented artists.
We also had some really cool artists perform opening and closing of UXI20. In case you didn’t attend UXI20 and wondering if you can re-watch it. We’ve got you covered. Catch the recap here.
Moving Stories
UMO Design’s Moving Stories — Story telling challenge is about conveying emotions that connect people inspire and influence them in a positive way. We’ve had a good response from the community and they have shared with us some very moving stories from their lives. We celebrated the finalists and the winners on the last day of the conference. You can check them out our on website https://www.umo.design/express/
We could really see the audience connecting (in the chats of course) with the stories showcased.
UX Ladder
UX Ladder is one of the most enjoyed sessions at UX India. We’ve been conducting UX Ladder sessions since the past few years and the audience have always loved to ask questions to the panel on design and more. UX Ladder is nothing but a moderated Q&A session which will be built based on the questions audience asks and responses the panel gives you. It was very candid and highly impromptu.
This year we had design leaders who are heading amazing design teams in India. We are collaborating with for UMO Design School to craft a better curriculum and create industry ready designers.
Some Stats!
Launching UMO Design School!
We have been working on this project for a while now and all the team members at UMO are extremely passionate about offering a high quality education. This year we finally put our plan in motion. UMO Design school is officially launched with courses starting from Feb 13th! Read more here.
“Our vision is to inspire everyone to be a purpose-driven design thinker!”
Closing Note
What a feeling it is after nearly three months of hard work to close UXI20 on a flawless note. It sure was a surreal feeling for us to see you all on a piece of glass but we were so thrilled to see you interact with each other just as well as we would have if we met in person!
A big thanks to our Gold sponsors Servicenow, Uiser and the newly launched UMO Design School; Eco system partners Sketch, Axure, Balsamiq and mockplus for being so supportive and uplifting. We are hopeful to collaborate with you soon.
A huge thanks to our amazing speakers, who were so quickly able to accept our invitations to speak, adapt to the new virtual format, the new tools and deliver content in such a fascinating way!
Finally, a huge huge thanks to the young team who exceptionally performed beyond all imaginable expectations! We worked together just with one cause in mind — to offer a seamless UXI20 conference experience. Hope you thoroughly enjoyed it!
Looking forward — 2021
Let us put your mind at ease — there will be a UXI’21. If this year has proven anything, it is that despite any circumstance we are able to still pull off a great conference and we will continue to do so every year. We have no intention of breaking out 15 year streak, at this point its more of a tradition rather than a streak.
Looking forward we are excited for UMO Design school and the impact we can create thought it. We have great plans for community engagement — we intend to create new programs, run our flagship programs again like Design X Social again and so much more. Stay tuned!
To read the daily recap of UXI20 visit news.umo.design and subscribe to stay up to date on all that’s happening at UXI20 and UMO Design.
Let’s have a great year ahead!
Written by Rohan Sridhar. Rohan is a user experience designer and core team member at UMO Design, UX India.
