On June 30th User Intelligence hosted the first Rotterdam edition of the UX Cocktail Hour. Since many years the UX Cocktail Hour is a popular event held on a regular basis in Amsterdam. With its 10th anniversary coming up User Intelligence decided to spread the word and bring the event to Rotterdam. The Rotterdam edition will also be a regular event and will exist alongside the Amsterdam based events.
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The UX Cocktail Hour is an informal event that focuses on User Experience in all its aspects. Speakers are invited to share their individual, special view on User Experience with an always very interested and enthusiastic audience, composed of passionate amateurs, UX professionals and other interested listeners.
During the most recent edition a large crowd of over 50 people was, in addition to cocktails, treated to three ambitious and interesting speakers, who spoke on various fields related to User Experience.
Ronald Verschueren shared his vision on the importance of research in establishing a great User Experience. He showed, through real world cases, how his company NetMarketing leverage research to increase the conversion rate of (booking) funnels.
Erik Roscam Abbing showed how he addresses branding almost like an inter-human relationship between brand and customer. By helping companies to look inside first and discover the true heart and soul of the company he assists them in building a grown up relationship with their customer, leading to relevant innovations and great User Experiences.
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Bob Corporaal of User Intelligence enlightened the crowd with how User Experience can contribute to strategy development in companies. By principle the customer or user is the axis around which strategy development revolves or should revolve. However, until now the involvement of UX specialists in strategy is still limited. Solutions to this may lie in starting with small cases and building experience in this field. Second, UX experts should find a way to quantify their results for company revenues (to prove their value to higher management). And finally it is important to give successful cases a lot of attention!
Although the three presentations all started from a different perspective they all demonstrated overlaps as well. They demonstrated the important role User Experience plays in product design and development these days. Truly understanding the user is becoming more and more crucial for the success of a company.
Reactions (in real life, but also on social media) were very warm and positive. We hope that the next edition will be equally well visited and successful.