Save the date: The 53rd edition of Up.front is coming up on December 9th! Join us for the final meetup of the year with talks by David Owens, Tania Abanina and Hany Rizk.

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  David Owens The Virtues of Cities and How to Rebuild Them

  The earliest human settlements were founded, and grew, thanks to the benefits of shared resources and communal ways of working. After the industrial revolution city growth exploded to produce the global megacities we are familiar with today.
  These megacities are often missing the personal relationships that were the reasons for their original founding. Cities have grown to serve the global economy before their citizens.
  Connected cities and the sharing economy point to ways that we can recover some of those lost benefits of city living. How can we as designers and developers contribute to sustainable, livable and social cities?

  David Owens works as Principal Web Developer at AKQA. He’s fascinated by cities, networks and the boundaries between the physical and digital worlds.

  • davidowens.net
  • @fineartdavid
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  Tania Abanina Touchable Reminder for Our Dear Community

  In her lightning talk Tania will remind us of a part of our bodies that we strain a lot in our everyday work: wrists. After a short explanation of the anatomy, she’ll share a few exercises and releasing techniques that can be helpful to keep our wrists healthy.

  Tania is a web/UX designer and front-end developer, photographer, body researcher, tree hugger. Also Siberian.

  • taniaabanina.com
  • @tataata
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  Hany Rizk Is UX Killing the Experience?

  Testing and optimisation techniques have become ubiquitous and common to a point where almost any use case or UI or UX element has become standardised with best practices and design guidelines. This leads to products having similar look-and-feels with no uniqueness or sense of identity at all.
  How can a product be designed with a strong identity to stand out among its competitors, while at the same time appeasing to best practices in UX and conversion?

  A UX person through and through, Hany has been working and actively involved in the UX scene for over three years now. After receiving a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Uppsala University in Sweden, Hany began focusing on UX & product strategy on which he’s given numerous talks at different conferences and events in Germany, Sweden and Lebanon. He is also on the organizing committee of EuroIA.

  • hanyrizk.com
  • @RizkHany