User Friendly has been growing for 5 years. From User Friendly 2004 to 2007, the theme has been changed from Promoting Usability Concepts and Techniques to Connecting UX Communities while the number of participants from 210+ to 1000.  With no doubt, User Friendly is becoming one of the local Chinese UX conference brands.  Now usability, Information architecture, interaction design etc are not the main focus anymore, innovation is becoming the new focus that both local and international companies are searching the method to achieve.

Design is the goal of innovation; however, innovation is not only about design, but the whole package of research, design and management. Hence, the theme of User Friendly 2008 is Innovation for Asia meaning that we gather UX practitioners in the China-centered Asia at the UPA China platform to share knowledge and experience of UX research, design and management. To keep it really Asian, we have invited more local Asian experts and less US/European ones than the previous conferences.  All of them will continue of the tradition of sharing in the format of presentation, workshop and roundtable.

Although we are still a bit far away from a real Asian conference in terms of the background of participants, we are confident enough to believe that User Friendly is one of the most successful UX conferences in Asia given that we have had over 2000 participants in total from over 150 companies world-wide.  Moreover, we believe User Friendly 2008 will be the milestone of User Friendly conferences moving from China to Asia.

China as the new center of Asia has many successful companies behind which there are also many stories of innovation.  We really wish all Chinese colleagues send us your articles if any and share your story of innovation with the bigger Asian UX community.