Led by Graphic Mint’s founders Séamus Byrne and Julian Becerra, the event will bring together business professionals and UX experts for a day of insights into the value of UX design with real-world case studies; principles and practical application of user-centred design. Valuable ‘how-to’ sessions will cover the creation of useful and meaningful products and services, techniques to map and improve user experiences, journey mapping best practice techniques and styles, solving usability issues and low-fidelity (lo-fi) sketching methods.

UX refers to a person’s total experience using a particular product, system or service and takes in the design and usability of everything including websites, apps, products and services.  The explosion in consumer technology driven by smartphones, apps, broadband take up and the fast-approaching ‘Internet of Things,’ are leading to rapid advances in UX.  After being referred to as multimedia, UI and other IT-related terms, UX  has evolved into a discipline in its own right with an established ISO standard (ISO 9241) that includes research, user-focused methodologies and usability testing.

As Ireland’s leading proponent of UX (recognised with a People’s Choice Award at the 2015 UXies, Graphic Mint is calling for greater awareness of the area and for education to provide a graduate path to the profession.  Séamus Byrne, Graphic Mint Director of UX comments: “While we have a tradition of design – as celebrated in last year’s Irish Design 2015 programme and our third-level education institutes are working well at developing talent for the embedded Tech Industry, a lack of degree-level courses and training in UX will see the country losing out on the opportunity to become the world leader in the billion dollar (USD) field.  As well as the workshop event, Graphic Mint is engaging with universities to help build curricula including the MA in Interaction Design at IT Carlow.”

User Experience for Business will help to establish Ireland as the home for world-leading UX, just as Scandinavia is synonymous for design.  The event will help to build on Ireland’s Technology reputation and prepares it for the next evolution, centred on making technology easier to use through human-centred research and design.  The workshop has been devised especially for product managers, business managers and anyone looking to create a game-changing understanding of customer and user journeys in their organisations, in order to make transformational improvements to their products and services.