I just got back from Interaction'10 in Savannah and am in the midst of a nasty conference hangover. After three full days of conference sessions, a day of workshops, and two more days of amazing conversations my brain is beyond the saturation point.
This first thing I need to say is a HUGE thank you to the conference organizers, Bill DeRouchy and Jennifer Bove, as well as Samantha Soma, Ben Fullerton, all the volunteers, SCAD, and students who made all this possible. The event was a massive success in every way. The food, music, venues, and program were impeccable.
I'm not going to do a full recap of all the sessions, you can find that at Johnny Holland if you want the full overview. Instead I'm going to focus on themes that emerged from the sessions and conversations I had at the conference.
Meaning
How do we create meaningful objects and facilitate meaningful experiences for our users (or audience or customers ...etc)? Nathan Shedroff dove into this topic in the second half of his opening keynote (I'll let Jon Kolko tackle the differences between the first half and second half of this presentation). Nathan's model of "Experience" is very well rounded, and gives as a great framework for thinking about the aspects of interaction and perception. I especially like the idea of Triggers, which could quickly be described as a type of visual semantics, the way in which people immediately read an object based on their cultural and social foundation. This changes the idea of "experience design" (which is quite a contentious term right now) from designing an experience to more of a facilitation role. People engage with designed objects and have an experience based on their own biases and history, and this experience is meaningful.
Matt Cottam showed some beautiful experiments with embedded electronics and hand crafted woodwork. The goal of these pieces is to explore the nature of tactile feeling, and how it conveys meaning through the feel of an object. His wooden pieces are in sharp contrast to the common plastic and metal objects we all own. I don't think his idea is fully resolved, but I didn't get the sense it was meant to be. He's doing what we should all do as designers - theorize, play, experiment, make things.
Meaning and meaningful experience was also a major topic of conversation at lunch tables, in the lounges, and the hallways. This idea resonates strongly in our community. We are in a unique position through our work to impact people's experiences with the things we create, and try to help them find meaning in those interactions. We need to focus on empathizing with and understanding our audience if we hope to gain insight into their life experience and design things that will be meaningful for them.
Education
Each year, there seems to be more and more content at the Interaction conference related to education. The conference is always hosted by a college or university, but it seemed more prominent this year. Jeremy Yuille and Martin Tomitsch led a session on the future of interaction design education, which I unfortunately didn't manage to attend. I'm looking forward to seeing the video when it's released later this month.
Jon Kolko and Dan Hill both included a large amount of student work in their keynote talks. This is an interesting shift from showing professional work (which lots of people still did) to putting the emphasis on the work of students, looking at the next generation of designers. Looking at great student work is inspiring and gives me great hope for the future of our practice.
The student competition also put the spotlight on education. Over the last few month students from around the world submitted work to the competition, and five finalists were selected to attend the conference. It was fantastic to see students getting actively involved in the community and sharing their work.
Interaction Design has a long way to go in education, but we're starting to see major leaps forward each year. New schools are starting design programs, and Jon Kolko even announced the launch of his new design school in Austin.
Some of my favourite talks that I didn't mention already: Dave Gray's Knowledge Games session, Paola Antonelli's keynote about her new show at the MoMA, and Cindy Chastain's Storytelling talk (which actually made me rethink some work I'm doing).
It was great to see everybody there and get a chance to exchange ideas. This event has special meaning for me, as it's where I first found my professional home in 2008 and have been able to grow into a position on the IxDA Board of Directors. My unique history allowed me to have a great experience at Interaction'10, enhanced by all the amazing design work done for the event. I hope to see even more people there in 2011 at Interaction'11 in Boulder.
Posted in Opinions on February 10, 2010
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