UXistanbul 2015: notes and take-aways

Last tuesday, April 28th, started into a warm and bright Istanbul day. More than three hundred UX’ers walked in Dedeman venue early morning to attend UXIstanbul Conference. It was great to see the energy and enthusiasm of the Turkish UX’ers to be there beating the famous Istanbul traffic!

Pınar Cinali (Uxservices) opened the event and set the stage for the guest speakers. The course of the conference proved that UXServices did a great job in getting together very valuable keynotes. Cory Lebson (the former UXPA president), Natasha Levitan (Goldman Sachs), Matt Lee (Booking.com), Prarthana Johnson (Microsoft) and Lucas Pettinati (Google) shared their perspectives and experiences, and presented remarkable insights into their UX works. The take-aways: UX is the essence of good design today. The functionalities can be attained technically. What makes users happy is the way they interact with any IT product. When applied effectively, UX can positively influence the company performance and the life for those of us who use at least a smart phone or a computer (which is...all of us?).

In the panel discussion after the keynotes, UX professionals/managers from the Turkish companies gave impressive examples of how they apply UX in their fields. A notable question from the audience was: “Customer Experience (CX) and UX: Which one covers the other?” Good question. CX is the key to good service quality. If there is any IT “thing” that customers interact with, then CX is tightly dovetailed with UX. Can you please a young customer who is not a fan of your app? To me, CX covers UX, and UX is a core part of the customer journey. Anyhow, businesses should see that good UX leads to better CX, which eventually leads to higher service quality.

During the discussion I shared some good news on the academic side: UX related courses and HCI - usability - UX labs are on the rise in the universities. Plus, the industry and the professional societies are becoming more interested in the UX research and they are collaborating to build new labs.

Three final notes from UXIstanbul 2015: We have a very highly-motivated,                well-educated, bright UX community. UX is emerging in Turkey. And UXServices is leading the way.

Can’t wait for the next one.

The picture above: Cory Lebson speaking on his UXPA experience and UX careers.