The UX 2013 conference last week in San Francisco indicated a growing need and popularity of the user interface design profession in the IT industry. Students from Olivet’s Design and IT college attended the international event as it brought together some of the industry's top talent and influential representatives to speak on current trends.

"User experience has become a hot topic of conversation in the business world over the last five years. While technologies are rapidly advancing, customer service and product design are becoming more and more important," commented Terra Childs, Director of Staffing for Onward Search San Francisco.

For design students, balancing website performance with usability plays a big key in their curriculum projects.  The use of color and other design elements that may slow down rendering are taken into higher consideration amidst today’s fast paced environment and user-behavior.

The variety of workshops offered at UX 2013 presented designers with a wide range of skills beyond Photoshop, coding, or other computer design software.  Researching and presenting information that can get people to take action was one of the offerings.  Participants and students learned marketing tactics in promoting brands and designing to the emotions of users through empathy.  Others who basked for simplicity found the "Advanced Simplicity" workshop to be useful in prototyping and testing user interfaces to solve and explain ideas in a simplified comprehensible manner.

Lastly, students learning to be designers had a glimpse of research approaches for solving complex social problems such as poverty, social justice, and education.  The workshop reinstates the job description of a designer as solving problems, and not just solely on making things look pretty.

For more information about UX 2013, visit: www.uxweek.com