Best Design Conferences in 2023

One of the best things about being a part of the design community is that most designers love to exchange ideas, spread knowledge, and share their experiences regardless of their seniority level. You can be a starting designer or an established thought leader, and it’s almost a given that you find a design conference that may teach you something new.
What’s also great about UX conferences is that not all of them target the UX/UI community, but the people who work with them on a daily basis. Product managers, developers and other professionals who work closely with design can find an event for themselves.
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Strategies for Building a Resilient DesignOps Practice
Listen to experts from DesignOps Assembly discussing strategies that will help you set up successful operations in uncertain times.
- Date: Jun 28, 2023
- Free: Yes
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: UX designers, UI designers, DesignOps
- Common topics: design leadership, design process, design operations
January 2023 Conferences
If your New Year’s resolution is to network more, there are a few design conferences and events that seem to be a great fun.
Design Matters Mexico
Join Design Matters and review design impact, rethink sustainability and design for the future.
- Date: Jan 25-26, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Mexico City
- Audience: UX researchers, UI designers, UX designers
- Common topics: design sustainability, design process, leadership
February 2023 Conferences
What about the second month of the year? We’ve found a couple of conferences that may catch your eye. Let’s see them.
Leading Design
It’s the eighth time Clearleft decided to host their event for design leaders who want to hone their skills. The program looks very promising with the speakers coming from IBM, Stripe, Shopify, and more!
- Date: Feb 7-8, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: San Francisco, US
- Audience: UX designers
- Common topics: career, leadership, future of design
UX New Zealand [Hybrid]
Explore the layers of UX research, information architecture, design, strategy, leadership, psychology and organization in this two-day live event that will be streamed across the globe.
- Date: Feb 15-17, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual & Wellington, New Zealand
- Audience: UX designers, UX researchers, UX writers
- Common topics: accessibility, information architecture, research
UX360 Research Summit
Learn how to promote the value of research, make an impact, and take care of your team. UX360 is one of the best research conferences out there. You can select sessions to watch right now.
- Date: Feb 15-16, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: UX researchers, UX designers
- Common topics: research, career, leadership
Product World [Hybrid]
Product manager and product developer conference that concerns itself with creating agile environment, boosting leadership and collaboration, and presenting success stories that you can replicate.
- Date: Feb 15-23, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual and San Francisco Bay Area
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: collaboration, leadership, growth
Experience Design Conference
The Denver-based conference is devoted to human-centered design and sharing best practices coming from the Experience Design industry leaders.
- Date: Feb 27 – Mar 1, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Denver
- Audience: UX designers, UI designers, product designers
- Common topics: UX, product management, human-centered design, design thinking
March 2023 Conferences
March is going to be an exciting month for those of you who love tuning in for virtual conferences.
Interaction Week 23 [Hybrid]
This interaction design conference is a perfect excuse to visit Zürich if you haven’t yet. Listen to great talks about interaction design and sign up for workshops that will help you hone your facilitation, decision making, and analytical skills.
- Date: Mar 1-3, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual and Zürich, Switzerland
- Audience: UX designers, UI designers, researchers
- Common topics: UX, interaction design
QRCA 2023 Annual Conference
QRCA stands for Qualitative Research Consultants Association. The association is celebrating its 40th birthday in 2023. Time flies, doesn’t it? The conference that it organizes covers research methods, tools, and lessons that will prepare designers for the next era of qualitative research.
- Date: March 22-24, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual & Charlotte, North Carolina
- Audience: UX researchers, marketing researchers
- Common topics: qualitative research, research methods, research tools
Design Research by UX Australia [Hybrid]
A great conference for anyone who’s engaged in doing research before design work. The conference is still accepting submissions.
- Date: Mar 14-16, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual & Melbourne
- Audience: UX researchers, product managers, product designers
- Common topics: research operations, leadership, research methods, research tools
UX Copenhagen
March will be exciting month. This year UX Copenhagen comes back to the city with “Invisibility” as its leading theme. It will scrutinize design process and skills of designers to check if making UX hidden doesn’t leave any user behind.
- Date: Mar 23-24, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual & Copenhagen
- Audience: UX designers, UX researchers
- Common topics: UX design, leadership, content
ACM IUI 2023
Interested in AI for design? If so, you can’t miss out on this conference! It is focus on presenting outstanding research and development on intelligent user interfaces.
- Date: Mar 27-31, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Sydney, Australia
- Audience: product designers, researchers
- Common topics: information architecture, artificial intelligence
Information Architecture Conference 2023
It’s one of the leading conferences for information architects, designers, and others who create and manage UI and information environments.
- Date: Mar 28 – Apr 1, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
- Common topics: information architecture, UX research, content strategy
April 2023 Conferences
You’ll get a couple of conferences that will be interesting for designers, researchers and product teams. What are they?
UX Research Festival [Hybrid]
Being a brainchild of UXInsights, the largest UX research communities in Europe, UX Research Festival invites you to Breda (in the Netherlands) to hear out amazing talks about UX research.
- Date: Apr 17-19, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Breda, Netherlands
- Audience: researchers, designers
- Common topics: UX research, ResearchOps
WebExpo 2023
Travel to Prague, an extraordinary European city, to join fellow web designers, developers, marketers, and more discussing innovations in web design and development.
- Date: Apr 19-21, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Prague, Czechia
- Audience: designers, developers, product managers
- Common topics: web design, front-end design, UX
UX STRAT APAC 2023
This year’s edition will focus on this conference will focus on “Creating Business Value Through Design,” a topic that’s relevant for today’s discourse.
- Date: Apr 20-21, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Bangkok, Thailand
- Audience: designers, developers, product managers
- Common topics: design strategy, future of design, design leadership
CHI 2023 [Hybrid]
This year’s annual ACM Computer Human Interaction conference will be a hybrid event, which means that it will take place on-site in Hamburg and online.
- Date: Apr 23-28, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual & Hamburg, Germany
- Audience: researchers
- Common topics: research tools, research methods
An Event Apart
One of the most recognizable conferences for UX designers and front-end developers who want to expand their knowledge on web design.
- Date: Apr 24-26, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Seattle
- Audience: product designers, developers
- Common topics: design process, front-end design, leadership
Confab
Hey, content managers! There’s an event dedicated to increasing your skills. Confab is a conference dedicated to content strategy where you can get insights from industry leaders.
- Date: April 30 – May 3, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Minneapolis
- Audience: content managers, product designers, UX writers
- Common topics: career, content management, tools
May 2023 Conferences
May will be the month for on-site UX and product conferences. Let’s see where we can travel to. Are you ready?
DDX 2023 | UX Conference
Learn how to facilitate, foster and design positive business visions in emerging innovation fields.
- Date: May 6, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Munich, Germany
- Audience: product designers, product managers, design leaders
- Common topics: innovation, UX, leadership, sustainability
Product Day by ADPlist
Elevate your career in product design with ADPlist. The conference has four tracks: entrepreneurship, career growth, trends, and groundbreaking work, so everyone can find something for themselves.
- Date: May 10, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: virtual
- Audience: product designers, product managers, design leaders
- Common topics: design career, design leadership, innovation
DIBI Conference
DIBI stands for Design it, Build it, and it’s one of the best conferences in the UK for everyone who’s involved in the product development process.
- Date: May 11-12, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Edinburgh, Scotland
- Audience: product designers, product managers, design leaders
- Common topics: design process, design leadership
UXDX Community USA [Hybrid]
UXDX is a popular conference for UX designers, developers and product people around the world. The topics of this year’s design conference revolve around using data, innovating, working together, and building design systems.
- Date: May 16-18, 2023
- Free: Yes
- Where: Virtual and on site
- Audience: UX designers, UX researchers, developers and product managers
- Common topics: DesignOps, collaboration, design system
UXistanbul
Organized by UXServices, this conference is a place for gathering Web3 enthusiasts and designers interested in the field. Come and join them on Discord.
- Date: May 22-26, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: product designers, researchers, product managers
- Common topics: NFT, metaverse
ACE!
This Polish conference has two tracks: Agile Software Development and Product Design & Management. Yet, there will be a lot of content for product designers, too.
- Date: May 18-19, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Kraków, Poland
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: leadership, product strategy, product growth
June 2023 Conferences
That month looks very exciting for those of you who got used to participating in events from the comfort of their homes. In other words, there will be a few interesting virtual meetups.
UX STRAT Europe
Sign up for a European edition of a popular UX STRAT conference. Learn from the design and innovation experts.
- Date: Jun 5-7, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Amsterdam
- Audience: product designers, researchers
- Common topics: design strategy, future of design
Pixel Pioneers
It may be just a day-long, but the Pixel Pioneers is fully-packed with inspirational presentations from leading UX/UI designers and front-end developers.
- Date: Jun 16, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Bristol
- Audience: product designers, developers, researchers
- Common topics: human-centered design, inclusive design, future of design
UXPA 2023
Looking for inspirational talks? San Diego’s UXPA conference may be your cup of tea.
- Date: Jun 20-22, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: San Diego
- Audience: product designers, researchers
- Common topics: human-centered design, leadership, research
July 2023 Conferences
The summer season is on, but there are a few exciting events coming. Curious what are they?
ProductCon
Organized by Product School, ProductCon is a 1-day conference for product people who want to learn more about managing products.
- Date: July 2023
- Free: Yes until April 2023
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: leadership, product innovation, collaboration
HCI INTERNATIONAL 2023
That international conference on human-computer interaction that is usually held in Gothenburg, Sweden.
- Date: Jul 23-28, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: product designers, researchers
- Common topics: human-centered design, research, leadership
#mtpcon Digital Americas
The summer edition of the Mind the Product conference for both Americas.
- Date: Jul 10-14, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Virtual
- Audience: product designers, product managers, developers
- Common topics: leadership, future of product, product growth
August 2023 Conferences
UX Australia 2023 [Hybrid]
You don’t need to be located in Australia (but if you are, we’re jealous) to attend this. Designers from the vast fields like UX, product and service design, research, content, operations, etc. meet to discuss product design.
- Date: Aug 22-25, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Sydney, Australia
- Audience: product designers, UX researchers, content designers
- Common topics: design process, leadership, DesignOps
UX Nordic [Hybrid]
Almost on the exact same date, another conference is taking place – UX Nordic. This one is great if you want to hone your skills and to grow as a designer.
- Date: Aug 24-25, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Aarhus, Denmark
- Audience: product designers, researchers, content designers
- Common topics: accessibility, case studies, design process
September 2023 Conferences
SmashingConf Freiburg 2023
Are you a UX Architect, UI Developer, or a Product Designer that needs to work a lot with engineers? You can’t miss this event that oh-so-smoothly merges development and design.
- Date: Sep 4-6, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Freiburg, Germany
- Audience: product designers, developers
- Common topics: accessibility, web development, design process
The UXConf 2023
Brought to you by The School of UX, The UXConf has an incredible lineup. Designers from Hotjar, TripAdvisor, HubSpot, Skyscanner, Goldman Sachs, Eurostar, and more will walk you through important UX topics.
- Date: Sep 13, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: London, UK
- Audience: product designers, UX researchers
- Common topics: tutorials, design process, tools
Design Matters Copenhagen [Hybrid]
This well-known conference advertises itself as, “Made for designers, by designers.” And it truly is so! We highly recommend you attend it, but if you can’t, check their library of talks.
- Date: Sep 27-28, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Copenhagen, Denmark
- Audience: product designers, UX researchers
- Common topics: tutorials, design process, leadership
October 2023 Conferences
See October conferences for designers and product teams.
ProductCon San Francisco
Another Product School’s ProductCon event is happening in October. It is a 1-day conference for product people who want to learn more about managing products and the future of product management.
- Date: Oct, 2023 (TBD)
- Free: No
- Where: San Francisco
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: leadership, future of product management, product growth
World Usability Conference
Let’s meet in Austria and discuss usability with other UX professionals and participate in talks and masterclasses where handpicked speakers share meaningful hands-on insights.
- Date: Oct 10-12, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Graz, Austria
- Audience: product designers, researchers
- Common topics: design process, usability, sustainability
November 2023 Conferences
Web Summit Lisbon
Come to a sunny Lisbon to participate in lively discussions on web design and development.
- Date: Nov 13-16, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: Lisbon, Portugal
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: web design, web development
UXDX APAC 2023
It’s yet another UXDX event, but this one is an Audio-Pacific version. It’s dedicated to Product, UX, Design and Development teams that want to find a way of working together.
- Date: Nov 14-16, 2023
- Free: No
- Where: San Diego
- Audience: product managers, developers, product designers
- Common topics: product direction, scaling design, validation, product growth
Which Design Conferences Are You Attending in 2023?
It seems as if 2023 is going to be full of inspiring and educational content coming from the best speakers in design and product management. Have you found a conference for you? We will definitely keep you posted if any new event comes our way.
Use the knowledge that you acquired from design conferences in practice. Instead of working in siloed environment, unite your team with a single source of truth: interactive components that can be used across design and product. Discover more about it. Check out UXPin Merge.