When: February 3–8

Where: Lyon, France

The conference is preceded by two days of interaction design education summit and a day of workshops, with a student design challenge running in parallel. And of course, since the event is organized by IxDA (Interaction Design Association), be sure you’ll have the chance to connect with a number of passionate designers.

When & where: February 7–9 (Berlin, Germany) and May 10–11(San Francisco, USA)

Workshops, talks and the chance to network with design folks at major companies, as well as designers who run their own studios and freelance.

When: February 10

Where: Kiev, Ukraine

Alan Cooper (Father of Visual Basic) and Vitaly Friedman (Smashing Magazine) are among the big names coming to Kiev for a day dedicated to UX — from design at enterprise to how user experience will evolve thanks to VR and AR.

When: February 12–16

Where: Wellington, New Zealand

Now in its 12th edition, Webstock is one of the highlight events in design and user experience in the Asia Pacific region. This year’s speakers include top people from Clearleft, Etsy, Amazon Alexa and GitHub. Also, see up and coming startups from New Zealand at the BNZ Startup Alley.

When: February 20

Where: London, UK

This year’s conference focuses on improving ‘collaboration between designers and business stakeholders’. To that end, the lineup of speakers has people from a host of different companies, serving in various roles related to user experience and design. Unfortunately, tickets for this conference are all sold out, so you can either join a waitlist or catch a video recording. But despair not, there will be another one happening in September of this year.

When: February 20

Where: Istanbul, Turkey

This is the 4th edition of UX Istanbul and this year ‘service design’ and all things related to it will be in focus — methodologies, best practices, new technologies etc.

When: February 24

Where: Worldwide

A celebration of information architecture across 5 continents, 25 countries and 56 locations! Local communities the world over come together for one day to meet, share, learn and grow. This year’s theme is ‘IA for Good’. You can see all the locations here, and if a place near you isn’t on the list, no worries. You can check out an event which will be live streaming their session.

When: February 27–28

Where: Copenhagen, Denmark

This edition of UX Copenhagen is centered around the theme of ‘Ethics and the Role of the User Experience Designer’. Talks this year include topics of design ethics, design for cognitive bias, and the importance of inclusive and accessible technology.

When: February 27-March 1

Where: Seattle, Washington, USA

ConveyUX brings together UX professionals in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Apart from talks on a number of subjects (like Planning for Strategic Design, Designing for VR/AR, Using Data Science to Quantify User Journeys), ConveyUX also runs a project showcase in parallel. Designers can visit this informal exhibition to view projects from Salesforce, IBM, UPS and interact with their designers on the practical challenges and solutions associated with it.

When & where: February 25-March 2 (Los Angeles), March 17–23 (London), April 14–20 (Washington DC), April 28-May 4 (Chicago), July 2–6 (Mexico City)

The Nielsen Norman Group is one of the foremost authorities on user experience and interaction design. Their annual conferences are held across different cities and have courses and certifications for new designers, pros, as well as managers.

When: March 5–7

Where: Newport Beach, California, USA

UX Immersion is one of the stand out events for UX designers among the annual conference lists. Conducted by Jared Spool’s User Interface Engineering, it features practical workshops and talks from some of the leading professionals in the industry. Attendees can choose from among six workshops to attend, which include topics like Utilizing Mapping to Gain Stakeholder Alignment, Building Consensus in Critiques and Design Studios, and Crafting UX Success Metrics.

When: March 7–8

Where: Utrecht, Netherlands

UX Insight is an event focused on user experience research. A full-day of workshops on the 7th (topics include A/B testing and analytics, guerrilla research, impact of insights etc.), followed by an entire day of conference and talks (topics include designing digital products for children, organisational drivers of UX and recruiting users fast and cheap with Facebook ads.) on the 8th.

When: March 7–9

Where: Edinburgh, Scotland

As they very well put it themselves, Service Design in Government is a “community event for anyone involved in designing and commissioning public services”. This is the 5th edition of the conference. There are over 40 sessions to choose from including case studies, workshops, talks and discussions.

When: March 8–9

Where: Melbourne, Australia

Two days dedicated entirely to every aspect of design research, from planning and conducting, to analysis and use. A full day of workshops and one day of conference.

When: March 9–10

Where: Hong Kong

User Experience HK brings together professionals in the product and service design disciplines to learn and share knowledge on topics ranging from research, marketing, design, technology and business.

When: March 7–11

Where: Tokyo, Japan

One of the premier conferences for Human Computer Interaction and Artificial Intelligence community. Some of the leading academics from the field of psychology, cognitive science, computer graphics and design attend to share their research and learning with peers on intelligent interfaces.

When: March 14–15

Where: Helsinki, Finland

Design systems are getting increased adoption across teams for the clarity and organization that they bring. This conferences is all about design systems, and features talks from design leads at IBM and Airbnb, among others on their team’s experience implementing and scaling design systems. There’s also an entire day of workshops around the subject.

When: March 15–16

Where: Manchester, UK

UX in the City is a popular series of community-powered events across cities that provides a hands-on learning experience in the form of talks and workshops. There are also case studies and tutorials on voice UI, designers working with data scientists, guerrilla research etc.

When: March 19–20

Where: San Francisco, USA

Leading Experience, or LX, is an event for leaders in the design space dealing with challenges of innovation and driving change at scale. Speakers this year include Creative Reaction Lab CEO Antoinette Carroll and Buzzfeed VP of Design, Cap Watkins.

When: March 20

Where: Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

A series of 5 minute talks on various UX related topics. The biggest highlight being that it is completely free to attend for those interested.

When: March 21–25

Where: Chicago, Illinois, USA

One of the stand out events for Information Architects and Experience Designers. There are two days of pre-conference workshops and three days for the main conference. Conference talks are categorized under design, structure and strategy. An event to keep your eye out for is the Information Architecture Slam where teams brainstorm and present solutions to an entire client project, in under one hour.

When: March 24

Where: Brighton, UK

If business like conventions are not what you have in mind then this may work better for you. A rather informal gathering for people involved or interested in user experience and everything related to it. There is no rigid schedule, like at a conventional conference; rather 20-minute sessions organized from among the attendees on the day itself.

When & where: April 2–4 (Seattle), June 25–27 (Boston), July 30-August 1 (Washington DC), August 27–29 (Chicago), October 8–10 (Orlando), December 10–12 (San Francisco)

An Event Apart continues to attract one of the biggest crowds for UX and design conferences, and with good reason. The talks are great, the speakers are engaging, and the networking is amazing. No reason to miss it with plenty of dates and locations to attend at throughout the year.

When: April 14

Where: St.Petersburg, Russia

ProfsoUX is a community driven event for user experience professionals in Russia. This year’s keynote speaker is Kevin Richardson, Director of UX @ Infragistics, who will be presenting on the topic of ‘Architecting Speed — Making Racing Data Useful’.

When & where: April 17–18 (San Francisco, USA) and June 26–27 (Toronto, Canada)

This year’s Smashing Conference SF is about finding out the how and why of ‘outstanding and fast experiences’. Everything that goes into making better experience from CSS grids to multi-cultural design, it’s at the two day conference in San Francisco.

At Toronto, Smashing Conference is introducing a new platform where speakers demonstrate how web designers and developers work together, via live interactive sessions, without using any slides. So that live coding, brainstorming, sketching, performance profiling, lots of learning.

When: April 19–20

Where: London, UK

A 2-day conference that centers on improving the user experience in medical healthcare for all stakeholders. Hear from UX design consultants, interaction designers, doctors, user researchers and entrepreneurs in the medical industry.

When: April 23–24

Where: Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

MinneWebCon encourages grassroots knowledge sharing and networking. The first day is for keynotes and sessions (these include topics like Caring for Users, AI and Improving the Experience of Users Living with Disabilities, 3D Experiences in Your Browser etc.), and the second day is for workshops (such as Designing User Focused Conversations for Web Applications, and Capturing 3D Objects with the Camera You’ve Already Got).

When & where: April 25–27 (New York, USA) and September 19–21 (London, UK)

The New York edition has one day for workshops followed by two days for the conference. Highlight talks include Abby Covert of Etsy talking about Information Architecture for Everyone, Shopify’s Director of Design discussing The Impact of Bad Product Design and Content Strategy for Slow Experiences hosted by Margot Bloomstein. The programme for the London edition is also to be announced soon.