For some years, a friend of mine has praised the conference Boye Aarhus, as it’s called now. So this year I decided to visit. Just for 1 day. Nothing wild.
I bought an early bird ticket in February. I made arrangements for train and hotel well in advance. As it turned out, the trip then almost collided with the complete transformation of my apartment, because of moth treatments. You know, “we need access to all edges of floors and all kitchen cabinets, in order to spread moth poison”. But what about my stuff? Apparently, the only option for my stuff was to move to a temporary room elsewhere… That project alone was about 1.5 months.
The 1st treatment was Monday morning. Tuesday noon I was on a train, very ready to do something not related to small, flying pests.
I’m pretty sure I have stress. (Why? Moth!) I am easily confused, forgetful, not as detail oriented as I usually am. Also, I’m not in any shape to do a full day, including dinner. (Unrelated to moth.) So. I intended to do as much of Wednesday as possible, but skip the dinner. But maybe I could attend the Tuesday dinner instead? Yes? Great! And then I confusedly didn’t. Sigh. But at least I managed to find the con site (Godsbanen) and a fast route between hotel and con.
Wednesday arrived. I had pretty much made a list of all the User Experience talks. Yeah!
9.00. Welcome to the conference
- Somebody calls this a digital conference? Huh. Yeah, I guess that’s a good word. Actually helps, to get a word.
- There are no microphones? Oh, that might be a problem. (Yes, it was, for the usual reasons.)
- I count about 60 chairs, most of them taken.
- An athlete describes how retiring from a very demanding career (Olympic silver at some point) is like dying. I don’t know. Maybe? That goes for all kinds of retirement, right?
9.15. Mapping the agentic frontier: What have we learned, and what’s ahead
- Horror movies are a rest from the horror show that’s reality. 😁 Let’s talk about The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum. 😁
- What’s your AI attitude, Doomer, Accelerationist or Centrist? (Doomer, in the sense that the bubble can’t burst soon enough.) So. That’s a scale. But it’s not depicted as a scale, with Centrist in the middle. 🙄
- I get the sense it’s impossible not to talk about AI? 😞
- I could use a little more depth here. Yes, there’s a known effect, where new technology goes through a phase of disappointment. But there’s also a known effect, where something new generates new words, and there’s a phase of confusion, before the consolidation. The latter seems to be a secret?
- Goes over time, but keeps talking. (In general I hate that. But this was a small con, short distances etc. It wasn’t actually a real problem.)
10.15. Adapting design systems to constant change
- There must have been some error here, where something scheduled for the break between items didn’t happen. The 1st 10 minutes: people moving chairs and tables. Loudly. Making the “tell us your name” round even harder to hear. I also think those 10 minutes stay in the program as a delay, until lunch.
- This is about Figma, a lot. I think that name is new to me. I did some research later. Huh. Neat. But even not knowing exactly what it was, I decide it must be some sort of platform, some underlying part of other programs or maybe a module. Good enough. I can make sense of the rest.
- Interesting dynamic, where “we need to have a button to change to dark mode, Figma doesn’t support it, we’ll build our own”. And then some day Figma changes, and you have to build that function again, on top of the way Figma does it. Frustrating, but necessary.
- I sit behind 2 persons who keep doing their own thing. Very distracting. After this item I switch places, so I can’t see it. Works. (The big surprise is actually, that this doesn’t happen a lot. Most people seem to be really paying attention.)
11.00. Who gets left out? Challenging assumptions in design systems
- Some items begin at 11.15. I get confused. Come to think of it, why can’t I find a table with the programme, to make stuff like that obvious? Am I supposed to photograph the whiteboard? Why not use something like ConClár?
- A lot of people have disabilities. This influences what they buy. It also influences what 2 of their loved ones buy. That’s a lot of money!
- Curb cut effect – good for wheelchairs, but also good for so many others.
- What’s intersectionality? What, I’m the only one who knows? “Well, black women are both black and women.” Kneel before me and my intelligent answers!
- Endowment effect – I built it, it’s wonderful.
- Invisible barriers. Solsikkesnoren. A move against invisibility.
- This item includes 20 minutes of debate in small groups. Brilliant!
12.00. Lunch
- Networking is so noisy.
- Surprisingly good lunch.
13.00. What happens when experience, capability and seniority no longer develop at the same speed?
- Ehm. I don’t know? Halfway through I get the sense the title and description doesn’t quite match the talk. Also, this is UX?
- Oh. Dark purple letters on a black background.
14.00. Roundtables
- My head is spinning. Back to the hotel for some rest.
15.15. How the Danish Tax Agency balances design thinking and standardization
- The Danish state has a department for simplification? Wow. 😲
- The dreaded “just reading the slides out”.
- Don’t know about the word tender. I doubt it means soft, in UX Tender Requirements. (Turns out it’s related to “we need a product to do xyz, how do we find the right supplier?”.)
- Don’t know about the double diamond.
16.15. Small Feature Award
- A fun item at the end of the day. People are teasing each other a little. Some of them seem to know each other very well.
- One “small feature” is a program to run a pub quiz. “Which mammal can fly?” Bat. What? Was that a hard question? Ehm. Tremble before my huge brain and its utterances!
- “Next year the programme will include buttons to build a personal programme.” Or, you know, use ConClár.
And then I was very happy to go back to the hotel.
I think I’ll get a copy of the slides later?
Most of the day was good. I haven’t done something like this in a looong time. It’s inspiring. On the other hand I think I was a very small minority, here on my own dime, not here to further my career in any way. I was also on the older side of the average, though I was very happy to see a guy with white hair present a small feature.
