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     When the global coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, conference organizers had to respond quickly and decide whether to cancel their conferences outright or move them online. With a tremendous amount of effort in a very short period of time, numerous conferences were relaunched as virtual conferences; recorded or live-streamed speakers broadcast in a multitude of ways, with varying degrees of interactivity. It looks like it may be a long time before it is safe to host or attend large in-person conferences. So based on our experience attending virtual conferences in the past few months, we wanted to explore what makes a great virtual conference.

      The IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR) is the world’s most prestigious academic conference on the broad topic of Virtual Reality (VR). Every year, the conference sees hundreds of attendees and presenters from all over the world both from academia and the industry. However, this year, due to the unprecedented spread of COVID-19, the conference organizers had a mere 3 weeks to make a decision to cancel the conference or turn it into a true VR conference. A decision was made to move it to an online only format with the capability of attending the conference in VR. From celebrations to presentations with light sabers to chit chat around a virtual campfire, it was a milestone for the VR industry. Yes, there were glitches and problems that came up, but first - I would like to acknowledge and congratulate the organizing committee for the amazing job they did putting it together in such a short time!

       An Event Apart is a series of three-day-long UX Conferences held throughout the US in the following locations: Washington DC, Seattle, Boston, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Orlando. An Event Apart offers attendees three full days of "design, code and content"- three days worth of opportunity to learn, connect, and explore. An Event Apart (AEA) offer presentations and panels from industry leaders, thinkers and innovators, focusing on a range of topic today and tomorrow.

Below is a compilation of some of the most relevant points from some sessions I was able to attend. More information and resources can be found here.

      AnxietyTech is a conference started by Kari & Jamund Ferguson, a husband and wife team that aims to “explore how technologists can better contribute to the growing mental health challenges in the world”. They brought together researchers, technologists, and mental health professionals to discuss the intersection of mental health and technology. It is a conference for programmers, researchers, technology developers, and health providers in order to expand the conversation surrounding how technology is changing the way in which we understand and approach mental health challenges.

     The UX Game Summit by Epic Games, first launched in 2016 as the very first gaming summit with a focus on UX. It is important to put players first in the design process of gaming in order to ensure better player engagement and more time played. The UX Game Summit helps bring together professionals that are passionate about the current state of UX in our industry and ways to continually improve and innovate the user experience.The Game UX Summit is hosted by different companies each year, this year was hosted by EA. Also this year, Key Lime Interactive, was one of the speakers at the 2018 UX Game Summit. Here is a recap of our presentation and some of the takeaways from the conference by our UX rockstar, Shao-Yu Chen.

The annual VRX conference was held in San Francisco, CA on December 7 & 8 2017.  Here are a few of the major takeaways from Key Lime Interactive’s Lead Researcher and Strategist, Rick Damaso, from this year’s event. 

“User Experience designers and researchers can impact the course of events by creating technology, products and services that are inclusive at their core.”- WUD2017

    This past Thursday, November 9th, was the Puget Sound World Usability Day 2017 event, which focused on the theme of inclusion through user experience. This theme addressed the power of technology as a medium that brings people together and helps us to embrace our similarities. This powerful theme attracted a wide range of industry members, from Google to Amazon, to two Key Limers. This WUD 2017 was extra special for us because our amazing VP of Client Insights, Steve Foster, gave a presentation on Biometrics in UX Research.

Dallas is so much more than cowboys, great BBQ, and big hair. As most know, they have a notable UX community that gets together frequently within the UXPA Dallas group. Last Thursday, we had the opportunity to attend their recent Meetup gathering hosted at Improving and give it a Key Lime Interactive splash.

Global Research study pros from Groupon, eBay, Google and Key Lime Interactive were seated on a panel at the International UXPA Conference event in San Diego in late June. They came together to share their words of wisdom for successful global user testing endeavors.

The Gaming Analytics Summit held in San Francisco brought together a nice crowd of headliner video games such as Minecraft, Call of Duty, Destiny, Angry Birds, and Candy Crush. In attendance were the big gaming giants such as Sony PlayStation, Xbox, Activision, and Electronic Arts. Being an avid gamer and data analyst made this conference extremely informative. The topics ranged from in-game analytics to building a company structure that best handles big data. My focus at this conference was to see how the user’s voice was being heard in the video game development pipeline. Qualitative interviews meant very little to this group who focus more on big data and analytics, but some companies set themselves apart by emphasizing the importance of the user in maximizing their earning potential.