On 21st and 22nd June, User Research London (URLDN) will be bringing two days of user research learning to its audience. Following the success of last year’s event, the conference is coming back bigger and better, with several talks and interactive workshops to get involved with. We recently spoke with User Research London’s founder, David McCrae, who is a professional UX Researcher at Google, about the event and what we can expect.
🎙 It’s only User Research London’s second year, but you have already been able to grow the event from a one-day conference to a two-day event with workshops and talks. Is this a statement to how much the industry needed an event focused on user research?
From the start of User Research London, I always wanted it to be a practical event where the audience could grow the skills we talk about and, after the acceptance of URLDN as an event last year, I was certain I’d put the workshops on this year.
I created User Research London because I wanted an event where user researchers from all over the world could come to one place and share their stories. It was the event I needed, and it looks like the industry agrees. I’m excited to see that we have more people attending this year than last and from more parts of the world and organisations too.
🎙 What can the attendees expect from a second day exclusively dedicated to workshops?
We’ll be running some half-day workshops and a whole day workshop too. My favourite part of User Research London last year was the mix of topics and the amazing experiences we heard from our speakers.
This year I’m so excited that two of the speakers are coming back to run workshops and build on the ideas from their talks last year. Dan Szuc and Jo Wong are coming back to run their incredible ‘Make meaningful work’ workshop and People for Research’s own Jess Lewes will be joined by Maria Santos to workshop recruitment practice.
🎙 It’s great to see such a diverse group of speakers. Tell us a bit about the line-up.
This year’s line-up is huge and I’m excited about being able to sit in a room and hear from all of these people. I think we’re in a privileged place because our audience also wants the conference to be an incredible event. It’s not just the audience nominating their own ideas for talks, they also recommend others to speak. I’ve also always been proud of how closely we work with our partner events like UX Hong Kong and how they have helped to introduce us to amazing people from all over the world.
🎙 The schedule is not available on the website yet, but can you disclose anything about the topics that will be discussed during the event?
Things are changing up slightly: there won’t be a keynote, but instead all our speakers get 30 minutes to talk. We’ll also be taking the feedback from last year and trying to bring more lightning talks into our main programme.
As for what you’ll hear about, we’re sticking to last year’s plan of talking about the world around research, as well as the practice itself. For example, we will hear from Ben Cubbon and Nic Price (from Participant Needs) about being a research participant and another speaker, Nick Leon, will be talking about using documentary film in research.
We’ve even got a talk about what GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation, which comes into play on 25th May) means for us as a practice and there is a lot more to be announced, all appearing on our website.
🎙 What can the attendees expect besides the talks and workshops?
Our sponsors are always meant to be involved in our event, so you’ll be able to get advice from People for Research about your recruitment briefs, you can advertise your CV or job role on Zebra People’s job board and, of course, interact with all our sponsors on the day. More than that, our friends at the Reach Network are planning to organise an event alongside User Research London – more details on that to come.
You can find more information about this and other events, as well as a summary of our GDPR tips, on our latest PFR magazine. Click here to read online or download for free!
As one of the event’s sponsors, People for Research will be getting involved by putting on a workshop and running our expert user recruitment clinic. If getting free advice on how to find the right participants to take part in user research sounds perfect for you, keep an eye on our blog and on our Twitter account to find out more once the registration page is launched.
If you would like to find out more about our in-house participant recruitment service for user testing or market research get in touch on 0117 921 0008 or info@peopleforresearch.co.uk.
At People for Research, we recruit participants for UX and usability testing and market research. We work with award winning UX agencies across the UK and partner up with a number of end clients who are leading the way with in-house user experience and insight.
