Vitaly Friedman
UX Lead, Creative lead, editor-in-chief,European Parliament
Vitaly loves beautiful content and does not give up easily. Born in Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany. While writing algebra proofs and preparing for software engineering at nights in the kitchen, at the same time he discovered passion for typography, interface design and writing. After working as a freelance designer and developer for 6 years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine back in 2006, a leading online magazine for designers and developers. His curiosity drove him from interface design to front-end to performance optimization to accessibility and back to user experience over all the years.
Vitaly is the author, co-author and editor of all Smashing books (https://www.smashingmagazine.com/books), and a curator of all Smashing Conferences (https://www.smashingconf.com). He currently works as editor-in-chief and creative lead of Smashing Magazine (www.smashingmagazine.com) and front-end/UX consultant in Europe and abroad, working with European Parliament, Haufe-Lexware, Axel-Springer and a few other companies.
Talk
How To Design AI Interfaces That Actually Work For People
AI experiences don’t have to be slow, verbose and unreliable. We can shape AI way beyond a chat — and guide users to better prompts and results without too much hassle, typing, retyping and going back and forth. In this session, we’ll explore what helps AI products stand out from competition, what AI products work well, and which ones fail, and how to choose the right AI features to actually be used by actual customers.
You’ll learn actionable patterns for AI products that work, real-life examples and insights from research on AI products, but also how to lead conversations with engineers and PMs — and how to enable realistic and feasible AI experiences that users trust, love and actually use.
Workshops
How to Measure UX and Design Impact (7h)
About the workshop
How do we measure the quality of UX? What metrics do we use? How do we bridge business objectives and UX goals? How do we remove bias and guesswork from design decisions? And how can we make a strong case for the impact of design work?
This hands-on workshop dives into one of the most important – yet often overlooked – aspects of design practice: defining, choosing, and tracking UX metrics and design KPIs from scratch. Through practical group work, you’ll explore how to shape design success, establish team-specific KPIs, and track them effectively, all while building accountability and ownership into your design process.
Who is it for
- Experienced designers
- Product managers
- Design leads
- Heads of product
What you’ll need
Nothing fancy – just paper and one laptop per group of 3–4 participants.
What you will learn
- How to define the notion of design success for your team,
- How to measure design work against business goals and needs,
- How to choose the right mix of qualitative and quantitative research,
- How to define KPIs that focus on user needs but also respect business needs,
- How to use the Top Tasks methodology to understand and prioritize user’s tasks
- OKRs vs. KPIs vs. metrics, how to translate them into clear goals for each team/department, and how to apply them to design work
- How to make sense of SUS, UMUX, UMUX-Lite, SPRQ, North Star Metric, NPS, CLV, CSAT, CES, MAU, MRR/ARR and business KPIs,
- How to navigate the unpredictability of technical limitations and business constraints to still move confidently towards better design,
- How to build a design KPI tree for each team and for each department
- How to establish ownership, accountability and buy-in for design KPIs
- How other companies and organizations define and track design KPIs, and what we can learn from them
Why participate
While many departments regularly track performance against measurable targets, design teams are still too often seen as “pixel pushers.” In reality, design and user experience create enormous impact – but this impact needs to be visualized, articulated, and tracked. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to do exactly that, raising both the visibility of your work and the perceived value of design in your organisation.
Format
Highly interactive and group-based. Participants will break into small groups (2–4 per table) to work on custom-tailored KPIs for real-world projects.
Maximum participants
No strict limit – the more, the merrier!
You’ll leave the workshop with a toolbox of practical techniques and strategies on how to define, establish, sell and measure design KPIs from start to finish — and how to make sure that your design work is on the right trajectory.