Refresh 2018 - going deeper into the world of product teams

“Previously the design and product talks were sharing the same stage and the emphasis was more on product. We got a lot of feedback from the attendees that they would love to see more presentations on design and it was just logical to add the design stage to the programme,“ comments Janika Liiv, the Founder of Refresh. “The importance of design in software development has changed drastically even during the four years we have organized Refresh. Few years ago you just needed engineers to build a startup, but today designer is one of the first important hires next to developers. Having a separate stage for design means, we will also have more talks on product management and the whole event is more thorough.” Refresh will feature 21 international speakers, who will be going in depth into these 4 key topics:

Great teams know that to build a successful product, you need to understand and care about your customer. Rebekah Mueller, Senior Product Manager at the biggest audiobook platform Audible will be talking about how to fit into customer’s life without losing sight of humanity; Anna Jozanis, UX Designer from the biggest Polish e-commerce site Allegro, will be sharing her experience how to redesign an old product, when customers are used to bad solutions; Laura Carvajal, Software Engineer from the Financial Times will uncover the things we can do in development to make the product more accessible to the disabled.

Good communication and collaboration inside the team are major factors that help a company be more effective in what they do. The topics will be ranging from designing design processes that help you keep your focus on the right place to sharing your research results in a most effective way with the whole team.

It wouldn’t be a learning experience, if the topic of personal growth wouldn’t come up! The lack of growth is number 1 reason of people leaving their jobs and discussing is crucial to relieve stress and to avoid burnout. Alexandra Lung from Pivotal Labs will be sharing the 7 things she wish she could have known before becoming a product manager, Wilson Albert, Engineering Lead form Farfetch will talk about being first-time team lead and the confusion what comes with it and Tim Wantland, Design Lead from Google AI, will talk about intuitive intelligence and how to grow as a creative professional.

It’s interesting to play around with new technologies, but isn’t always clear what are the practical implementations, trades-offs or challenges we might face if we want to use them in a production environment. Hence it is crucial to hear others’ experience and case-studies on to get a better understanding of the technology. At Refresh you will learn what to keep in mind when developing a voice-based interface, why you should host your single page apps in a serverless environment and some practical tips for using web components.

“Refresh is the only conference in Estonia dedicated to creating digital products, which covers all the important topics starting from figuring out to whom and why the products are necessary, how to design them, to how you actually technically build them,” says Pärtel Vurma, Partner at the award-winning design agency Velvet, sponsor and a avid fan of Refresh. The value of Refresh is really clear to him - “Participating Refresh should be mandatory to every self-respecting Estonian designer, front-end developer and product manager working on digital products!”

With its unique concept, Refresh is bringing together the whole product team and gives the participants a chance to peek to the world beyond their own and be curious about the bigger picture. Join Refresh already on 7th September at Tallinn Creative Hub!