UX Fest is about connecting and celebrating the practitioners and leaders who are building great products and designing amazing experiences. We’ve managed to assemble a fantastic list of speakers who are doing just that!
As part of introducing them to you, we decided to ask them the following question:
What’s a product or experience that you’ve seen or used recently that made you think “wow, that’s cool” or “that’s really good design”? And why did it make an impression?
Collecting and reading through their responses has been a lot of fun – you can learn a lot about someone by the the experiences that excite them and the products they use and endorse.
How would you answer that question? Do you use any of these products? I do (shout out to TrainingPeaks and Sonos!).
Come to UX Fest to meet these amazing leaders and hear their stories!
Current Favorite Product Experience: Full Moon Ghee
“I’ve been trying to source locally as much as possible, grounding myself in my community and the land that supports us here, as a way of being in active, nourishing, and mindful relationship: knowing the people who grow the food I eat, knowing the folks who make the vessels that carry my food, knowing (in other words) the many ways in which I am a small part of a greater, living web of interdependencies, and remembering that without the hard work and devotion of countless beings, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be me. One product I’ve fallen in love with recently is Full Moon Ghee, made in Greenfield, MA. It’s tastes incredible (I use it to cook, blend it into my coffee, and even use it as a dip for tortilla chips!), is super healthy, and is made with such care and intention. It’s a part of reclaiming my kitchen and my home from the hands of monolithic corporations, and inviting in the hands of people who are near to me, those who are living with integrity close to the land that keeps us all alive.”
Connect with Andrew at livingtolisten.com.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Headspace and Amazon Echo Dot
“Headspace is pretty slick. Super intuitive and simple. No onboarding friction. Up and running/meditating in minutes.”
“I also like the Echo dot. Far less intrusive than the original and just as functional.”
Follow Julia on Medium at Julia Austin and twitter @austinfish.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Outlook Mobile
“Outlook on mobile. Hate Microsoft but the focused inbox plus the built-in calendar won me over. It’s a killer iPhone app.”
Follow Dave on Medium at David Cancel and on twitter @dcancel
Current Favorite Product Experience: Sonos app for speaker setup
“It made the process of hooking up speakers (which my nerd used to enjoy, for the complexity!) even more delightful. I was using an iPhone, and I remember it literally instructing me to flip my phone so it could capture the sound better as part of the ‘tuning.’”
“It could be totally made up, but it struck me as a really useful design intervention if indeed people weren’t optimizing their speakers due to how they were orienting their phones.”
Current Favorite Product Experience: Delta app & Gregory Targhee 32L Backpack
“I love the Delta app feature where it sends a push notice when my bag has been loaded on the plane. I check my bike case and I am always concerned about it making every connection because I need it for work. I’m literally giddy with excitement every time I get that notice from Delta that my bike case has been loaded on the plane.”
“This winter I bought a new pack specifically for backcountry ski touring and it is incredible. Great example of product design where it is not trying to be multiple things — it is designed specifically for backcountry ski touring.”
“Yes you could use it for just hiking, but it shines when used of touring. It has pouches components for essentials — probe poles have a specific holster, as does shovel handle and easy to access for emergency. Hooks and straps placed perfectly for strapping skis to the pack for when you have to boot hike. Hooks and straps can be grabbed while wearing gloves. Durable construction.”
Follow Ben on Twitter @benrabner.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Android Phone
“Just today, I was changing phones, and it was super easy to set up my new phone because Android has all your contacts, mail etc. and with one login you get your entire phone setup. To clarify, it doesn’t quite say “apps you downloaded” it was “recommended apps” and all of them were the ones I had on my previous phone.”
“I am a privacy fanatic and yet I find myself giving into Android and saying ‘Fine Google, you can have all my data because you make it so darn simple’…”
Follow Radhika on Medium at Radhika Dutt and twitter @RadhikaDutt.
Current Favorite Product Experience: iPhone X
“Might be covered in the media too much but the iPhone X notification reveal when it sees you looking at the phone was a real delight the first time. It’s still cool.”
Follow Martin on Medium at Martin Eriksson and twitter @bfgmartin.
Current Favorite Product Experience: NY Waterway app
“My favorite product these days is oddly enough the New York Waterway app for my ferry from Hoboken to NY midtown everyday (about a 7 min ride). The experience that they’ve designed is a bus routing gps map that lets me time leaving my office for when the bus will be within a block of the pick up spot. The bus routes roam the city since the ferry dumps you down by Jacob Javits Convention Center, which really isn’t near most work hubs.
“The total experience, as janky as the app and buses are, works effectively and accurately and gets me to choose the ferry with its consistent schedules over buses or subways – it enhances their business. They started with the experience vs. their ferry service.”
Follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahbernard.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Yesware
My favorite product experience right now is Yesware, hands down, because of how seamlessly it fits into my existing productivity behaviors, and enhances them, rather than trying to get me to create new habits. If you do it right, you can make your time allotment for email adapt to your life, rather than the other way around.
“My second-favorite product experience is all the life I get to live because I’m not on my phone.”
Follow David on Medium and Twitter @delmarsenties.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Chanel Lip Stain and TrainingPeaks
“One of my favorite products right now is honestly a red Chanel lip stain in ever red. Actually I found it with my boyfriend testing which lipsticks didn’t create a disaster. I really like wearing lipstick but would find it rubbed off on everything. I like it because I can wear the stain all day and the gloss looks really nice. I’m usually a huge fan of the Chanel brand and had a great time learning how to contour in New York. I am usually very pale and that can look really ghostly in pictures or on camera. The lip stain helped me avoid the need for a lip liner as well, which is nice because those tend to look strange on me.” (Editor’s note: It’s hard to find a good lipstick. ;-).
“The other product that I’ve really enjoyed lately is my TrainingPeaks account. There is something really rewarding about seeing your workout week with green across the board and watching what kind of progress I’ve made. I love that my heart rate monitor will upload data from my swim workload and tell me how much stress that workout was. I love watching my physical abilities improve, and being able to track over time how my workout schedule impacts my health. Once I could tell from the heart rate and stress results that I was coming down with a cold. I work in health IT and some companies come out with a new product for tracking or pretend they will give you health data. I find myself comparing them with my TSS scores from training peaks and- they just don’t have the relevant data that an athlete would want. They don’t have medical grade tracking abilities, so why are we pretending they are relevant? I’m not a professional athlete but I love the way Training Peaks and a coach help you optimize and visualize your performance.”
Follow Janae on Twitter @CoherenceMed.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Apple AirPods
“My beloved AirPods – From the way they come in the packaging to the way they connect (nice sound and pretty automatic pairing), pause when one earphone is off, charge in the very cool case which I thought I would lose but is the perfect size – and has the very cool magnet that causes the door to shut with a snap. I love how I can run with them and pair them with my oldie apple watch and listen to music on my run without carrying my phone. I forget the headphones are in my ears.”
“I was a skeptic but form the first moment Ii put them on I have loved these beauties. The only time I don’t love them is when I think I’ve misplaced them or when I pull on (or off) a sweater and one comes out. The reason I know they are my perfect product is that when I think I’ve lost them, I already have a plan to replace them, they’ve become so essential.”
Follow Paul on Twitter @pswylie.
Current Favorite Product Experience: Peloton
“Does email count as a product? This really made me think “they know me” (and perhaps that I have an addiction). The app has also made this calendar view very prominent.”
“Peloton communicates not about their product but about my engagement with their product.”
“Three days after receiving this email I walked into a shop and spent $3,500 on a [Peloton] bike. So there’s that.”
Follow Perry on Medium at Perry Hewitt and on twitter @perryhewitt.