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

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.

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