Stampede team has always strived to stretch the design world beyond meeting the current industry standards; we’re here to redefine it. We aim to always keep excellence as our standard, stretching beyond just design execution. We are dedicated to elevate design, marrying strategy with innovation to chart new territories. In achieving this, Shaza, our co-leader is the biggest supporter and player when it comes to facilitating our mission.

The main event hall, more coverage of the event can be found on their Flickr album!

A few months ago, us from the design team were buzzing with excitement when Shaza announced that anyone could potentially attend the World Usability Congress 2023 in Graz! About a week later, Azim, the UX Designer, Wan, from business development team and I, the product designer, got the news — the three of us were selected to join Shaza herself for the trip!

We strategised ways to gain as much knowledge, as this conference is a treasure trove of UX practices in global level presenting many learnings that we could adapt and adopt. Even though the four of us have different roles in Stampede, we came to Graz with one mission in mind. We all want to find opportunities to elevate the design capability standard in Malaysia! On the 8th of October 2023, the four of us packed our bags and flew to Austria. We landed in Vienna International Airport and straight away took the train ride to Graz, while soaking in the sights and learning about Austria’s train system along the way.

World Usability Congress is an international conference organised by Youspi (an Austrian UX, CX and Usability agency) focusing on topics revolving around usability and user experience design practices. Held annually since 2013 in Graz, Austria, the conference brings together professionals, researchers, and practitioners from various industries to discuss the latest trends, share insights, and showcase innovative approaches to continuously improve user experience. This event covers the wide spectrum of usability and user experience design practice; ranging from UX design, user research, product development, strategy, Ops and more, making it a highly relevant event for anyone in the tech and design field.

The event lasted for four days from 9th to 12th of October 2023. The first two days were Focus Days — containing industry-specific talks and in-depth workshops, and then the final two days were the Conference Days — the main event containing multi-track talks, masterclasses and keynote (maximum 4 tracks at one time). Azim and I attended workshops relevant to our respective practices, and then on Conference Days all four of us dispersed to maximise the learnings from the multi-track talks and connections made. Check out our learnings in another post with more detailed breakdowns!

A reunion (or actually the first time meeting in-person) — 24 Hours of UX committee members, assemble!

Our main objective in Graz was to gather knowledge, but we didn’t miss the chance to connect with as many people as we can as the UX community in this side of the world is very friendly and engaging, like ours back home. We used this chance to build genuine connections with fellow UX-ers or virtually anybody we can interact with and built our presence in the region.

Even before the conference started, the interaction with the UX community already started by meeting Johannes of UX Graz — one of Shaza’s comrades in arms, having organised together the 24 Hours of UX in previous years remotely from across the world (Making this occasion their very first time meeting in person, which we couldn’t really tell from their sense of camaraderie)! He toured us around the beautiful city of Graz and introduced us to several of his colleagues along the way. Very memorable introduction to the event and hosting city. We also met Ahmed Al-Huwwari of UX Jordan and Peter Horvath — both committee members 24 Hours of UX, making this event such a special in-person meetup for them!

The following day, after completing our workshops, we attended the UX Graz meetup dinner that was open to any WUC attendees. As our usual practice in any mass gatherings, Stampede members scattered as we make connections with as many new faces as possible because we love connecting with a diverse cast of attendees, boosting the chance of getting many new and different perspectives. That very night was very exciting as everyone we met were very genuine and friendly, we also gained some insights into how the tech and design scene looks like in Europe through those valuable conversations. We all had the same mission going into the conference. The actual conference is on the next day, but we already got a glimpse of UX practice through the lens of Europeans and pumped up to go through with the rest of the event!

Pre-conference meetup dinner hosted by UX Graz. Such a great, cave-like vibe restaurant.

Real conference days came next. Naturally, we made many connections there as the WUC event was designed to give plenty of opportunities to network and mingle around — during breakfast, in-between talks (20 minutes gap between talks), lunchtime, and the night of picturesque hilltop at Schlossberg during the Networking Dinner. Networking there was so magical that we made so many new precious connections throughout the journey, and we long to see them again anytime in the future. Even after the event ended on our way back to Vienna via train, we connected by pure chance with Susanne, one of the WUC volunteers, that our hearts were filled with joy till the very end and beyond!

Stampede team in WUC Networking Dinner with Philip, an engineer-turned-UX designer from Graz. One of the many new friends we made here, with interesting stories.

And I’d like to share some tips in connecting with event attendees of any large prestigious events, that might not be applicable to everybody but have worked for us;

Focusing too much on design & professional conversation topics every time with everybody can feel transactional and takes a toll on our energy. Just remember that everybody is human no matter how professional they are, and we just want normal conversations to know each other better before opening up more.

So, we tested a different approach with a Danish designer named Anton. Surprisingly, we found that genuine connections were made easily when we are invested in that person’s story. Our conversations that night started to change, as they revolved around our respective country, life, career journey and virtually anything that came across our minds. The conversation eventually led to career & professional topics at some point, but it felt more natural. It was less tiring, and we could maintain our social energy for a long duration. And more importantly, it didn’t felt

The picturesque Vienna horizon from Eventim’s office rooftop during our office visit.

We carried this approach to make more connections throughout the event and we managed to learn more about people, common issues and values, and finally not forgetting; to talk about the design cultures abroad to learn from each other. We even scored an office visit to Eventim in Vienna (Thank you for your hospitality, Marcus and Katharina!), attributed to the small talk and genuine connections made with the people we met there. All in all, connections should be pure and have minimal underlying agenda, as we all appreciate the natural relationships between people — as we always do in design field.

The highlight of the World Usability Conference for us aside from the important profession-related learnings, was the connections made with the people, thanks to the numerous networking opportunities designed within the conference itself. We cherish all of them, and this bond will go a long way in the future in whichever means that we have no way of predicting.