Opening Keynote - You Are A Designer

As always with Aral, a lot of great WTF examples where he highlights UX designs that were clearly not created for humans, but his washing machine example felt like adding 100x cost and complexity (and risk of error) to a design that does work, with well recognised icons that actually match icons printed on clothing labels - I consider that good design.

But that gripe aside, it does focus the mind on why we should provide a good user experience.... and the tail end is looking specifically at examples from our online domain (particularly web versus mobile)... reminds me of a recent xkcd http://www.xkcd.com/1174/
Well presented, inspirational and thought provoking

Lots of laughs. Very inspiring.

A great talk - lots of laughs throughout, and some thought provoking parallels between toilets and websites.

Excellent talk...

Absolutely fantastic keynote. Really engaged the audience and used humour well to put over his point

Great talk

Very amusing, interesting, and true.

This alone made it worth coming to the conference

Very good way to start the conference. Really enjoyed the talk. Experience Design is a big part of what we do but we don't always give enough attention to it.

Superb. Executed well and fun to listen to.

Perfect start to the conference. Engaging, thought provoking, really struck a chord with me and vocalised a lot of my attitude towards things that I hadn't thought through as such before. Great references to the great man Steve Jobs, too, which I appreciated. Philosophical and thoughtful and great humour. Hope I see this guy again.

Great opening keynote fodder - engaging, well informed, humorous, with a broad appeal and delivered not just confidently but with the panache and style of a professional speaker.

Excellent and true

Fantastic, engaging start to the conference

The end bit was bonkers (in a bad way). The rest was pretty good.

Can't give anything other than 5 thumbs. My talk of the day.

Very engaging and lively talk from Aral on not settling for crap user experience design. Nice to have a non-tech start to the day too

Aside from the overdramatic ending, this keynote was truly excellent: great topic and great delivery.

Stunning! The message is spot on.... and if you want to learn how to present, then here's one truly great and inspiring model. Alive alive alive! Thank you Aral.

Excellent motivating talk with some really good examples. Great way to start the first day of the conference.

Brilliant way to start the two days. Got a bit dark in its mood at the end in a slightly bizarre way, but the rest of the talk was lively, funny, and very interesting.

Liked the examples of design gotchas.

Great starting talk to get PHPUK moving.

Engaging, entertaining, informative and inspiring. Great way to start the weekend.

Inspiring and funny with great visual content (toilets). Could have done with more focus on good design rather than poor design.

Brilliant, I can never look at a toilet the same again!

Passionate to the last, very engaging and thought provoking. I did think it went a tad too far in the end part depending on perspective. I hope to listen to Aral speak in the future.

Very engaging and well presented.

A treat to listen to, it was such a funny, inspiring, and brave presentation. And I really liked the ending, to be able to deliver a talk that pushes emotional buttons is a sign of a true professional.

Don't ever stop, Aral!

The talk was just brilliant but I don't think it's the right opening keynote for a PHP conference.

Inspiring talk. Good to be reminded that people are using our products!

Great talk, great speaker!

An excellent talk from Aral; witty, well delivered and presented with a very impassioned conclusion.

Aral is a good presenter and adds lots of drama to his talks. I like this very much. The "real life" examples add to that. It's cool to see that these examples come from every day life.

I have seen Aral present a couple of times and some of the ideas are recycled from other talks. This is not necessarily bad, but removes a bit of the magic.

But hey who cares: something that was good the first time I saw it, can be just as good the second time.

Now that I've seen this talk a couple of times, I am very curious to see something brand new from this great speaker/performer.

Great talk as expected from Aral, always entertaining!

Entertaining with a serious message - inspiring stuff

Made me start thinking out of the box when designing and programming software. Awesome.

A very humourous and thought-provoking talk that has, for a while at least, inspired me to think more about good design.

Great talk, especially after my experience with a ticket machine on the way to the conference.

Good keynote, similar to one that I've had been to previously but with some improvements. The ending was not that good with an attempt to reach a more emotional side of the audience that ended up sounding exaggerated.

Very good keynote. Definitely a great entry into the conference. While it's not a rocket science we always forget how to make each other lives easier.

A few points: I believe the beginning was a bit too long, while the examples were great and made me laugh so much, at some point I started to wonder where is it all heading to, as it barely touched on a technology. I was worried that there will be no conclusion.

Oh how mistaken I was. There was a conclusion, and it was an amazing finish.

Aral is a great and very passionate speaker. And he knows what he is talking about.