Pixel Up! UX and Design Conference Kicks Off May 8, 2017 in Cape Town

JOHANNESBURG—January 7, 2017—Farai Madzima today announced that eFFed Up! will hold its 2nd annual Pixel Up! User Experience (UX) and Design conference May 8 through May 10 at Cape Town’s Cavalli Wine and Stud Farm in Stellenbosch.

At this year’s three-day conference, user experience and user interface designers from South Africa and around the world will learn about the latest tools and processes to create the most innovative apps and websites for customers in South Africa and the rest of the world.

Pixel Up! 2017 will feature 14 inspiring and practical talks by speakers who’ve worked at Apple, Google, IDEO, Airbnb and more. Four master-grade hands-on workshops to help designers skill up in new techniques will be delivered by world renowned authors and facilitators.

This year’s conference includes a notable lineup of featured speakers from the UX and design industry, including:

• Andy Clarke – one of the best known UK web designers (Wales)
• Austin Knight – Senior UX designer at Hubspot, speaker, and author (Brazil)
• Brad Frost – Web designer, speaker, author, and consultant (Pittsburgh)
• Emma Craig – UX researcher at Shopify (Canada)
• Kevin Hoffman – Information architect and design strategist and author (Philadelphia)
• Josh Clark – Designer and author (New York)
• Michael Sui – Senior designer at Airbnb (San Francisco)
• Mindy Gold – UX content strategist at Capital One (New York)
• Nancy Douyon – User experience lead at Google (San Francisco)
• Ron Bronson – User experience etrategist at Practical Starship
• Sebastiaan de With – ex-Apple designer (San Francisco)
• Dr. Tendayi Viki – Innovation consultant (UK)
• Val Head – Web animation expert and author (Pittsburgh)

Designers and other professionals looking to learn and improve their user experience and design skills can apply for tickets via the Pixel Up! website (pixelup.co.za) now until Sunday, May 7 at 22:00 SAST. Tickets are limited to 150, last year was sold out.

“South Africa has a growing design community in need of learning opportunities and we have a great 3 days planned for them,” said Farai Madzima, Pixel Up! organiser. “We’ve invited global industry user experience design leaders who’ve worked on apps and websites that you probably use on your smartphone every day. We look forward to them sharing with our local designers and businesses so we can create the next generation of great apps and websites.”

Pixel Up! 2017 activities include:

• 14 talks and keynotes presented by experts on a wide range of topics for design and business including, running lean experiments in startups and corporates, researching users at scale, building design cultures within business, case studies on building design systems, and content led design;
• 4 hands-on, master-grade workshops to provide attendees with detailed practical skills and insight into optimal design techniques and practices that they can immediately implement in their day to day design practice and businesses;
• A social evening to connect with fellow designers and developers from around South Africa and around the world;

a get together for attendees focused on interacting with guest speakers;

• Engaging and inspirational lunchtime sessions with leading minds and influencers from the worlds of user experience and user interface design;
• Pixel Up! Future Labs, where attendees can experience upcoming software and hardware technologies including Virtual Reality, Amazon Alexa, and Google Home; and
• Pixel Up! Kids Lab, a workshop to give inner city teenage kids a chance to learn about design and it’s power influence their community and the world.

All 14 talks will be live streamed via the Pixel Up! website giving more designers around the South Africa and the world access to the latest information in real time.