UX Day 2027
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UX Day 2027
Taste Makers: Craft & Credit in the Age of AI
April 17, 2027 | Siebel Center for Design, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
When anyone can generate a screen, a persona, or a prototype in seconds, making things is no longer the hard part. Knowing what’s good is. As AI takes on more of the effort in design work, a designer's value shifts to taste — the craft, care, and point of view to decide what to build, who it's for, and what's worth putting your name on.
Last year, UX Days explored how designers work within systems in flux. This year, we turn to the people shaping what comes out of those systems. Together, we'll ask: What makes great work great, how do we develop the taste to recognize it, and who gets the credit when people and machines make things together?
Through keynotes, workshops, and conversations, UX Day 2027 bridges the critical and the practical, inviting students, educators, and professionals to sharpen the taste, craft, and ownership that make design human — no matter what tools help us get there.
Call for Session Proposals
We're looking for innovative and engaging sessions for UX Day 2027, a conference for the students, educators, and professionals shaping the future of design. This year's theme — Taste Makers: Craft & Credit in the Age of AI — invites presenters to explore what sets great design apart: how designers develop taste, practice their craft, make and defend decisions, collaborate with people and AI, and take credit (and responsibility) for the work.
About the Proposal Process
This year, we’re using a two-phase proposal process to simplify submissions:
Phase 1
Submit a short overview of your session idea and your background by January 31, 2027.
Phase 2
Selected proposals will be invited to share full session details, slides, and materials by February 12, 2027.
Who Attends UX Day
UX Day attracts a vibrant, interdisciplinary audience. Roughly 90–95% of attendees are students, mostly from the University of Illinois, along with recent graduates, educators, and community professionals. Many attendees return year after year, so sessions that build on — rather than repeat — past programming land especially well.
Attendees come from fields such as information sciences, computer science, business, industrial and graphic design, sustainable design, architecture, humanities, and psychology. Our participants include both undergraduate and graduate students, from first-year beginners to those who have completed internships or advanced UX coursework.
What We’re Looking For
For 2027, we're aiming for a well-balanced program that includes:
- Practical, skills-based workshops where attendees practice making and defending real design decisions.
- Panel discussions that show how different people and teams make the call on the same problem.
- Talks or case studies that walk through the key decisions behind real-world UX work — including the ones that went wrong.
- Interactive discussions that encourage reflection on responsibility, credit, and ethics.
We encourage proposals that go beyond introductory career advice to show the how and why behind decisions: how teams decide what to build, how research becomes a recommendation, and how designers stay accountable for work that AI helped produce.
Building on UX Days 2026
Many of our attendees joined us last year, so we'd love sessions that take them a step further. In 2026, attendees heard a lot about AI's impact on the field, trust in AI experiences, design systems, Agile, cross-functional collaboration, and finding your fit in UX. This year, we'd especially welcome sessions that:
- Move from talking about AI to hands-on practice using and evaluating AI tools responsibly.
- Teach the skills behind good judgment: critique, prioritization, synthesis, and articulating design rationale.
- Explore authorship and credit — in portfolios, on teams, and in AI-assisted work.
- Offer deeper or more advanced takes on topics introduced last year, rather than repeating the basics.
Suggested Session Topics
Below are a few topic areas that would be a strong fit for UX Day 2027. These aren’t required, but they reflect themes our attendees are most interested in:
Making the Call: UX Practice & Process
- Design Critique: Giving, Receiving, and Acting on Feedback
- Prioritization and Trade-offs (what to cut, what to ship, what to push back on)
- Articulating and Defending Design Rationale to Stakeholders
- Information Architecture & Navigation Decisions
- Accessibility Audits and Inclusive Design in Practice
- Usability Testing: Planning, Running, and Deciding What the Results Mean
- Prototyping to Answer a Question (choosing the right fidelity for the decision)
- Design Systems Governance: Who Decides What Becomes a Pattern
From Evidence to Decision: UX Research & Strategy
- Research Synthesis: Turning Messy Data into a Clear Recommendation
- When the Data Says One Thing and Your Gut Says Another
- Asking Better Questions: Interviewing & Survey Design
- Metrics, Measurement, and Defining "Good Enough"
- Cognitive Biases in Design Decision-Making
- Ethical UX: Dark Patterns, Persuasion, and Where to Draw the Line
Designing With (and For) AI
- Hands-On: AI-Assisted Prototyping and Workflows (Figma Make, vibe coding, AI research tools)
- Evaluating AI Output: Taste, Quality, and Knowing When It's Wrong
- Human-in-the-Loop: Designing When AI Should Act, Ask, or Defer
- Designing AI Experiences Users Can Trust and Correct
- Synthetic Users and AI-Generated Research: Uses, Limits, and Risks
Authorship, Credit & Ownership
- Showing Your Thinking: Portfolios and Case Studies in the Age of AI
- Who Gets Credit? Collaboration, Attribution, and Team Contributions
- Intellectual Property, Originality, and AI-Generated Work
- Accountability: Owning Outcomes After Launch
- Developing Your Point of View and Design Voice
Professional Insights, Case Studies & Panels
- Real-World Case Studies: The Five Decisions That Shaped This Project
- "A Day of Decisions" in the Life (UX Designer, Researcher, Product Manager, Content Designer)
- Leading Without Authority: Influencing Decisions as an Early-Career Designer
- How Non-Design Majors Bring Judgment from Their Field (psychology, CS, business, health, education)
- Ask Me Anything / Career Q&A Sessions
Hands-On / Deep Dive Ideas
- Decision Simulations or Role-Plays (stakeholder conflicts, ethical dilemmas, scope cuts)
- "Human vs. AI" Design Challenges: Compare, Critique, and Improve AI-Generated Work
- Live Critique Studios with Practicing Designers
- Rapid Usability Testing and Iteration Exercises
- Advanced Tool Sessions (Figma, Maze, Miro, Dovetail, Optimal Workshop)
Session Formats & Duration
Our 2027 schedule allows for a mix of sessions in three lengths:
We’re also open to creative or hybrid formats — if you’re unsure where your idea fits, submit it anyway!
Panel Opportunities
You can propose a panel with collaborators or indicate that you'd be open to being added to one of our curated panels. These panels will focus on themes such as:
- Who Gets the Credit? Authorship in Human-AI Design
- Effort vs. Judgment: What Designers Will Be Valued For Next
- Making the Call Across Disciplines (design, research, product, engineering)
- Hard Calls: Ethical Decisions in Real UX Work
See Sessions from 2026
Want to see the kinds of sessions we've hosted before? Browse the UX Days 2026 Schedule to view last year's speakers, topics, and agenda.