About the conference

What is UX Copenhagen?

Welcome to the UX Copenhagen conference – Denmark’s most inspirational human experience conference, covering subjects like user experience, content, strategy, and research under a new theme for each year. We will present you with two days filled with superb content from 20 or more local and international speakers, hands-on workshops, inspiration, networking, new knowledge, and new insights.

The theme for UX Copenhagen 2024

The theme for UX Copenhagen 2024 is “Degrowth and Consumerism”.

For far too long, we have been living in a world that applauds and encourages continuous growth, expansion, selling, and manipulation. It’s a world of over production and over consumption, but we’re running out of resources. Business as usual will not cut it anymore.

Angelos Arnis, the closing keynote for UX Copenhagen 2023 stated very bluntly “There is no planet B”. 

On March 20-21, 2024, we’ll be discussing climate change, consumerism, and waste. We’ll talk about degrowth, and about unlearning decades of harmful production, development and processes. We’ll have talks about how consumerism will need to change in order for the planet to survive. We’ll show some practical examples of work we have already done, and open the discussion about what we as designers can do to make sustainable changes for the better and create fundamental, systemic change. 

The conference will be a hybrid event – in-person and online. We will be hosting hands-on, live workshops; and live Q&A sessions with each of this year’s speakers. There will be raffles, book sales, and lots of opportunity to network.

Call For Papers/Talk proposals

Our Call For Papers for UX Copenhagen is open each year from June 1st to September 1st. We are looking forward to hearing from you! Please send your written submission via the form that will be active from June 1st on the website https://uxcopenhagen.com.

Previous talks

In case you missed out, many of the talks from previous years are available on our YouTube channel for free viewing (https://youtube.com/uxcopenhagen). The full recordings, including Q&A sessions and the talks not found on YouTube are available for purchase – please visit our shop for more information.

Online networking and interaction

We’re doing everything we can to support networking during our virtual events.

CHATROOMS – Hop in for some networking and get to know some of the other participants during our breaks!

SLACK – We have a Slack channel for all UX Copenhagen participants.

In 2020, we also started a new initiative: a series of conversations with what we call “Conversations with UX Copenhagen”.

Conversations with UX Copenhagen

Please join us live for open and candid talks with our upcoming speakers on our “Conversations with UX Copenhagen” videocast sessions. These conversations will be hosted by Helle Martens, as they are inspired by her initial chats with potential speakers for the UX Copenhagen Conference.

She will be inviting potential speakers, and voices in tech and design to talk about the upcoming theme for the next conference, about ethics in design and tech, and about everything in between. Every conversation is recorded live, and anyone can join in with questions during the event.

Tickets (free) will be made available on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/helle-martens-10096464967.

Who attends UX Copenhagen?

Everyone is welcome, and it’s not just a conference for UX’ers and designers! The talks are relevant to anyone working in tech, working with product design, both digital and physical, people working with communication, and creatives of all kinds.

Our speakers and participants are a fantastic mixture of international and local Danish UX experts, marketing professionals, digital managers, designers, innovators, strategists, researchers, and others interested in the field. The conference is run by Helle Martens’ tiny indie business team, and fueled by a strong passion for the field of UX and design.

We look forward to welcoming you to one of the world’s greatest communities, and two days filled with superb content, inspiration, networking, new knowledge, and new insights.

Some of the job titles our participants have include:

• design leaders
• ux designers
• ux researchers
• ux writers
• content strategists
• marketers
• web entrepreneurs
• graphical designers
• social media managers
• content designers
• content strategists
• content creators
• software developers
• tech leaders

A little background

The conference started in 2014 after an accident and a series of events that led to Helle Martens being laid off her job as senior UX’er. She decided to start her own company, and started joking that she wanted to host a conference on UX and design. About a year later, things suddenly fell into place, and she sold 144 tickets to her first event in March 2015.

2024 will be the 10th UX Copenhagen® conference. The themes so far have been: Customer Experience; Designing for Emotions and Trust; Designing for Empowerment; Ethics and the Role of the User Experience Designer; Consent & Privacy, and Influence & Designing for Good, Commoning, Creating a Culture Change, Invisibility, and for 2024, the theme is “Degrowth and Consumerism”

Every year, the conference has about 200 participants of whom 76% are international. 50% of the audience are “UX Designers” (interaction designers, service designers, UI designers, content designers etc.), and 25% are managers (UX Lead, Head of Design, Head of Software Development, etc.). The rest are marketing folks, graphical designers, and other creatives. It’s a great networking event with a really wonderful crowd of participants and speakers.

Helle runs the conference pretty much on her own. She has certain principles, for example she insists on having at least 50% women speakers, and as many different points of view as possible presented on stage. She always has at least one “new/junior speaker” on stage each year, and tries to promote charities, new startups, and initiatives that promote UX and doing good. The budget for the conference is solely based on ticket sales and (very few) company sponsorships, so she doesn’t have a lot to give. She does her best to share what she can though, and is adamant that both the speakers and she feels that what they agree upon is fair.

Code of Conduct

UX Copenhagen is, and shall remain, a safe place for different voices to be heard. Please find our COC here: https://uxcopenhagen.com/code-of-conduct/

ESG profile

UX Copenhagen is run by Helle Martens and her indie company hellemartens.com. The ESG profile can be found here (in Danish): https://uxcopenhagen.com/esg

Pricing

Early Bird: September 1 – November 15
Regular price: November 16 – January 31
Late Bird: February 1 – March 21