Join us for Milton Keynes Geek Night on Thursday 25th June. Last few tickets remaining — go get 'em!
We are DELIGHTED to announce our complete lineup for June with these 3 fabulous talks 👇
📆 When: 18:00-22:30, Thursday 25th June, 2026 – talks start at 19:15
📍 Where: x+why, Unity Place, 200 Grafton Gate, Milton Keynes, MK9 1UP – big love to them for supporting the venue!
🍕 Pizza: With thanks to Unity Place, we'll have a stack of pizzas waiting for you
We're looking for sponsors to help support event costs for this not-for-profit community event. Take a look at our opportunities.
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Topics, speakers & schedule
Andy Hall
The Curb Cut Effect: Accessible Innovation for Everyone
The curb cut effect demonstrates that designing to eliminate barriers for individuals with disabilities often improves experiences for all. At The Open University, our commitment to inclusive design enables us to develop learning environments, services, and digital platforms that are clearer, more adaptable, and easier to navigate. By prioritising accessibility from the outset, we support users with specific access needs while enriching the experience for the entire OU community. This presentation explores the broad-reaching benefits of accessible innovation.
About Andy
Andy Hall is a multidisciplinary designer with 26+ years of experience in brand and digital product design. At The Open University, Andy designs UX solutions that make complex educational tools user-friendly, accessible, and engaging.
Matthew Hall
Diagnose, Don't Guess
We're all certain we know why people behave the way they do - and we're almost always wrong. After 20 years building and optimising websites, Matthew has watched hundreds of real people get stuck, confused and quietly give up on sites that looked, on paper, perfectly fine. In this talk he shares the surprising, occasionally baffling things you learn when you stop guessing and start watching: why the "obvious" fixes rarely work, why copying the competition fails, and what actually changes when you diagnose a problem before you prescribe a cure. Expect real stories, a few myths busted, and a simple framework you can apply to anything you make for other humans.
About Matthew
Matthew is the founder of Hallway, a Shopify agency that helps ecommerce brands grow by understanding why their customers really behave the way they do. Over two decades in the industry - and a Shopify Partner since 2013 - he's moved from building websites to a customer-centric craft that blends UX research, design and development to uncover the real reasons people buy, hesitate or leave. He's spent more hours than he'd care to admit watching strangers struggle with websites, and is mildly obsessed with the gap between what people say and what they actually do.
Irina Csapo
Tender Tech: Joy, E-Waste and the Art of Delightful Making
Irina is a product designer by day: optimising flows and conversion metrics, moving numbers and shipping features, but also makes handmade collages from discarded computer parts, build tiny emotional apps in her Cabinet of Delights, and created Cosmic Pets, both an analogue handmade art practice and an AI-powered portrait tool that lets people honour their pets.
This talk is about the thread that connects all of it: the idea that technology, AI, e-waste, code can be made tender. It’s about finding joy and pursuing delight in creative practice, her own design philosophy and a survival strategy for anxious creatives in a tumultuous world landscape.
She'll share a curated look at her work across physical and digital, talk about the duality of making art both with and in spite of AI.
About Irina
Irina Csapo is a product designer, mixed-media artist and maker of small, joyful things. By day she designs high-impact digital products across health-tech, fintech and IoT. By night, she builds digital tools that make people cry a little, “Cosmic Pets” turns your animals into interstellar icons, “Letters from Your Future Self” writes back with impossible tenderness, and “Soundtrack of Your Life” creates musical moments that speak only to you. Her handmade collages combine e-waste, discarded computer parts and found ephemera into tactile works that interrogate hyperdigitalism, hyper-consumption and a life lived chronically online. Her practice sits at the intersection of technology and tenderness - and refuses to choose between them.
Partners
Milton Keynes Geek Night is made possible by the generous support of our partners and sponsors. If you would like to support MK Geek Night please get in touch - we have a range of opportunities and always open to new ideas.
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Upcoming events
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- #58 December 3 2026