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4 Progressive Design Events to Get to Before 2019 Ends


There are so many reasons to attend events in your industry. From networking, to getting face time with experts who’ll be presenting, to broadening your horizons, it seems like a no-brainer to add at least one to your calendar each year.

For designers specifically, there’s yet more reason. The industry shifts and evolves so rapidly that it can be detrimental to stay in the bubble of your day-to-day work all the time. There’s so much out there when it comes to progressive design events and the innovators that attend them that they present an opportunity to truly refresh your passion and skillset.

As such, and with 2019 70% of the way through, we wanted to share a few of the design events that you can still get to this year that are worth your while:

1) Design for Innovation 2019

Design for Innovation is another annual event, but this time we’re moving *cough* slightly further across the globe to Tokyo to take in what it has to offer.

The conference is one, as the name would suggest, that looks to the future of design and what the newest advances in the industry are and are going to be. Key themes the event will examine will include technology and global expansion strategies.

Now in its fourth year, the team behind Design for Innovation (Btrax) clearly showcase the type of people who’ll get the most from the conference, and these are they:

  • Managers and executives of companies interested in management strategies that make use of design principles
  • Those struggling with getting desired results from their design strategies
  • Managers and executives interested in global expansion and
  • Those who are responsible for the development of new business opportunities at their companies.

If that’s you, you can find more details here.

Date: November 5th, 2019.

Tickets: 10,000 – 13,000 yen.

Location: Tokyo, Japan.

2) World Usability Day Salzburg 2019

Every second Thursday in November, World Usability Day takes place and is celebrated across the world by those in the industry. There’s a particular emphasis placed on bringing together the fields of research, industry and education.

One such place offering a venue to bring those professionals together is FH Salzburg. Offering free tickets and four talks, this is one of the smaller events on this list, but certainly a must-attend if you’re in the vicinity.

Date: November 14th, 2019.

Tickets: Free

Location: Salzburg, Austria.

3) Digital Impact Week 2019

The tagline for Digital Impact Week, “Be part of global social change” could easily be enough to inspire you to attend, but I’ll try a little harder.

Being a little more specific, digital transformation is affecting every aspect of our lives, but the design of that technology, and a consideration of its ethical implications should probably be more scrutinised.

Specifically, this conference will focus on how digital technologies present an unprecedented opportunity in emerging markets. Now more than ever product and service design can be of seismic importance to the lives of many. The pivotal question is how the industry can answer that opportunity to be as beneficial as possible.

Taking place in the heart of London, previous attendees have come from many large organisations (think Sky, Amazon, Google, Sony, Bloomberg… you get the idea) but registration is open to anyone who wants to be part of the changes that’ll be discussed.

Dates: November 8th – 11th, 2019.

Tickets: £150 – £550.

Location: London, UK.

4) Design Leadership 2019

Lastly, but not leastly, we’re going to Canada to one of the most exciting line-ups at any design conference I’ve seen in a while. Design Leadership, hosted by Figma, will take place this November in the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto.

This two-day conference will see a truly remarkable list of companies represented by their design leaders. From PayPal to Intercom, and Netflix to Saleforce, there’ll be a lot to absorb, but a lot to look forward to.

The aim of the conference is to bring global UX and design leads together under one roof. They successfully managed that during their 2018 event, a recap of which you can see here.

For further details, just pop over to their (gorgeous) website.

Dates: November 4th & 5th, 2019.

Tickets: $676.87 (inc. VAT).

Location: Toronto, Canada.

If you have any favourites that we missed, feel free to let us know on Twitter. Until then, I hope this has given you an itch to get to one more event before the end of the year to meet up with your community and learn something new.

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