Five tags as a table of contents
UX Storm 1.2 ran on 16 August 2024 at AI9. The poster was a retro space collage, painted planets and a rocket trailing flame, and across the middle of it sat five tags that were the actual programme: UX.RESEARCH, UX.4.STARTUPS, UX.WRITING, UX.FUTURE, UX.4.DEVS.
Each tag had a person behind it. Alexandra Keidiia on The Power of Research. Hrachik Ajamian on What Startups Expect from a UX Designer. Nareg Abedi Masihi on The Craft of UX Writing. Shiraz Tumasyan on UX Meets Development. I took UX.FUTURE with Shaping the Future in UX Design, and moderated the speakers across the day.
Four organisations put their names on it: Armenian Creative Network, Armenian Code Academy, AI9 and imast. The room was AI9’s: exposed concrete ceiling, white spiral ducting, a slow ceiling fan, deep terracotta drapes, and rows of black folding chairs facing a projector screen.
The two tracks aimed at other people
Look at the five tracks again and the shape of the edition shows. Research, writing and the future are conversations designers have among themselves. Startups and development are not.
What Startups Expect from a UX Designer is a talk about the distance between what a designer believes they were hired for and what a five-person company needs from them on Monday morning. UX Meets Development is the same distance measured from the other side, at the point where a design file becomes somebody else’s implementation problem and most of the quality in a product is quietly won or lost. Putting those two on the same bill as research and writing was the position of the edition. A designer who is excellent at the craft and illegible to the founder and the engineer is not yet useful to either.
Nareg Abedi Masihi had the writing track, and at one point the screen behind him read LET’S TALK ABOUT GAMIFIACTION, typo included, next to a pixel-art sprite. Nobody in the room mentioned it, which felt like the correct response.
Paying to be there
Entry was donation-based, with the money going to vetted charities. That detail does more work than it looks like it does. Free events collect registrations. A donation collects a decision. People who put money down turn up, and people who turn up on purpose ask better questions.
It also settled what the series is for. Not lead generation for anyone’s course or agency. A room the community pays into, on the understanding that the money leaves and goes somewhere useful.
My own session, on where UX design goes next, is a topic that turns to vapour the moment you let it float. Kept close to practice it becomes three answerable questions instead: what is changing in the work this year, which skills are gaining value, and what a designer starting today should learn first.
