Join us in Boston this Spring: Urban Experience and Design Conference (Ux+Design/2023)

No need to worry about snowstorms or subzero temperatures, by April 28th the sun will be shining (I hope) and flowers blooming, in the academic center of the universe: Boston!

I am thrilled to share the news that I will be co-hosting the 2nd International Conference on Urban Experience and Design with the Human Architecture and Planning Institute (theHAPI.org). We held the first Ux+Design conference in 2019 and it was a big success:

• a Boston Globe Magazine article referenced the conference;

• Tufts University posted a conference debrief that Ann Sussman and I wrote;

• Ann and I co-edited a book that featured papers from the conference: Urban Experience and Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm

Enough of a splash that we decided to do it again!

Both Ux+Design/2019 and Ux+Design/2023 begins with a simple premise: that powerful biometric tools can give designers, planners, and architects new tools to understand the human experience and better design for it (like an ergonomics for cities). I have personally met scores of researchers and practitioners who are adopting the very tools and techniques that were introduced at Ux+Design/2019, I’m hoping to meet more at this year’s conference.

More than anything, it’s a new way to view the built environment: from the inside of our head, instead of “plan view” or from a CAD model. Drawing on a Cognitive Architecture framework that argues that we are born pre-set to respond to the world around us, Urban Experience/Ux (playing on the shorthand for User Experience, Ux) means that the designer/planner’s work can benefit from insights from biometrics and other windows into human emotions and unconscious responses.

The conference will be at the Tufts University campus in Medford/Somerville, walking distance from both the Red Line and Green Line MBTA stops: 9AM-3:30PM. Register here: https://sites.tufts.edu/uxdesign

Looking forward to seeing you then!