MEX – Mobile User Experience conference and awards

Over the last couple of days a very specific group of people have been getting together to talk about some very specific things.

User experience has long been argued to be crucial to the adoption of mobile products and services. Not just from a usability perspective, but actually to create experiences that people want to engage with.

Marek and chums from MEX have done a fantastic job at putting together a conference that is more than a bunch of industry bigwigs getting together and talking about how good they all are, but instead getting the biggest brains of UE to sit down and seriously discuss both the exciting possibilities, and the issues in realising them.

Also the people there were impressive, with a high entry point in terms of knowledge and understanding. Representations from Google, Nokia, Intel and a few networks joined our chums from Future Platforms, Ribot, 160 characters, M-Trends, Fjord and other agencies to make a really varied bunch of gurus.

Instead of the usual presentations the conference was defined by a Manifesto, broken up into statements. These statements were then presented and argued through by all present. Numbers were deliberately kept down to allow everyone to have their say, and regular breakout sessions meant that people could actively explore the possibilities through rapid sketch prototyping around hypothetical situations.

It was engaging from start to finish, and although there were maybe a few too many received opinions (iPhone is good, Windows Mobile bad, Blackberry for business users etc etc) for my taste, the discussions around enhanced phonebook, search, fashion, phones in developing countries, payments, handsets, fragmentation… the list goes on!
And of course, the awards ceremony went well too – picking up the Innovator of the Year award was a real honour, especially to get it from my peers in the user experience world.

All in all, a great couple of days!