Interactions 14 highlights
Reflections on Interactions 14 in Amsterdam
After a day of de-compression wandering the wet and wild streets of Amsterdam, I thought I’d reflect on Interactions 14 — the conference around Interaction Design and its related disciplines.
Top themes from the event
The Interactions 14 event was positioned to concentrate on languages of interaction between different disciplines, so it was no surprise that there was some diversity in the talks. That said, there were a few strands that helped to cohere the content and provide food for thought over the coming year.
1. Content vs. Delivery: The fight was in full effect
Some presentations were visually beautiful and clear in their communication of key valuable concepts.
Others were incredibly deep but with dense slides and poor delivery. Some were visually rich, but verbally impenetrable.
Others were basic and dumbed down. At times, the visual quality would intimidate you, but in most cases the higher visual quality slides enhanced an already good talk.
As designers, it would be good to see more efforts around the visual design of slides, and the verbal delivery of complex concepts — these things do aid communication after all, and many of the Keynoters could learn some communication tips from some of the first time presenters.
2. Mild backlash against lean and agile
There was an undercurrent of disdain for Agile and Lean approaches in terms of creating quality experiences. Though this was coming from the older keynotes, especially Dan Rosenberg and Gillian Crampton Smith, it was refreshing to hear the popular rhetoric cogently cut down a little by such original masters.
3. Collaborate and listen — Bridging the gulfs and chasms of understanding
Many of the talks focused on the importance and the methods of collaboration between User Experience practitioners and other disciplines. Gillan Crampton Smith hit the nail on the head re: the gulfs and chasms in understanding in her talk, but others touched on ways that we can address these gulfs and chasms through speaking the language of others and collaborating.
4. Beyond the visual sense
A welcome recurring theme to this years conference was the importance of designing for multiple senses beyond purely digital — whether sight, feel, sound, taste or vision, they all contribute to the experience and we must ensure that the combination of each in a product is considered.
5. Don’t forget about the enterprise
It was refreshing to see enterprise software getting more limelight than in previous years. From Scott Nazarian’s deep impressionist expose of the challenges of enterprise software, through to Dan Rosenberg’s debunking of myths re: the split with consumer software, and topped off with Krishna Brown’s enchanting tale of the enterprise dragon being pacified by a UX hero.
6. Tackling the talent drought
There were a lot of references to the needs of organisations to scale design teams against their design ambition, with big hirers like GE and IBM in full effect. As the audience did what they could to skill up against the ever-changing needs in the industry, different tactics were explored for growing talent in an organisation: from apprenticeships (Fred Beecher) and unicorn schools (Jared Spool), through to soft-sell sponsorship (Orange), and big parades of design appreciation (Microsoft).
7. The re-intellectualised conscienced designer
There was an undercurrent of design pontification and deep reflection that seemed designed to fight against the ‘de-intellectualisation of design’, as called out by Dan Rosenberg. Often the philosophical and academic takes would fly over the minds of the attendees recovering from the festivities the night before. Annoyingly there were the typical pleas to be more ethically conscious and aware in our design work, whether in terms of data privacy and ownership (Amber Case) or the unintended effects of intended interventions (Saskia Sassen). Luckily, there were some more measured and balanced takes on the issues, and these contributed to a less preachy ‘save the world’ subtext that could really grate on you if you’d attended previous Interactions events.
My favourite talks of the event
It’s unfair to pick out a top list when I only saw a subset of talks, but this was my take on the standout presentations from an aesthetic, narrative delivery, and content perspective.
You’ll be able to catch the videos here as they become ready.
1. Here, there be dragons: a fable of UX in the realm of Enterprise SaaS applications by Krishna Brown
Krishna Brown’s enchanting animations and poetic narrative of UX in the enterprise — one of the best 15 minutes presentations I have ever seen —I had a tear in my eye. Nuff said, I need a tissue just thinking about it — just watch it when it’s put online.
2. Food = interaction by Bernard Lahousse
Bernard Lahousse took the audience on a multi-sensory experience through a series of sweet props, taste theory, engaging slides and audience participation. It was a masterful delivery for some poignant messages re: the effects that different senses have on each other. You wont get the full experience without being there, but I’m sure the video will give you some sense of what we learned.
3. Giles Colborne on the lost art of efficiency in design
The UK legend that is Giles Colborne, brought some fresh perspectives on time in relation to product and service design, by bringing out classic tools like GOMs and KLM to help prove which design solutions can be more efficient and ultimately satisfying. Interestingly, he also explored the power of slowing down time in products and services to manage emotions.
4. Scott McCloud’s Comics: A Medium in Transition
Despite the AV glitches, and regurgitation of old material, you couldn’t deny the awesome presentation skills (both visually and verbally) and the critical messages around communication from Scott, highlighting the importance of narratives, visually abstracting for emphasis, and challenging the tyranny of slide counts.
5. Design in motion
Antonio De Pasquale, from Frog, delivered one of the most engaging slide decks of the conference. A worthy complement to his messages around motion graphics in interaction design, he embedded illustrative animations into Disney’s twelve rules of animation, to show the way that we can be thinking about motion design to aid interaction design in the coming years.
6. Design Thinking at scale
Microsoft’s Surya Vanka did a great job of selling how much they love design at the conference, but this presentation gave a little more of a depth insight into the design philosophies and principles that are encircling their efforts to be come more design-driven. Despite a slow and generic start, it gets interesting nearer the end as you see how Microsoft changed their design philosophies and principles and raise their design bar.
7. Gillian Crampton Smith’s ‘is there a Language of interaction Design’
Gillan Crampton Smith brought us back to some fundamentals talking around aesthetics beyond the visual (eg, early appleworks database), semantics of colour, how buildings carry symbolism and the gulf of understanding of even our own terms like ‘design’.
Bridging the Physical-Digital Divide
Despite my attendance at the other sessions, I found myself pre-occupied with the development of my own talk around bringing Industrial Design and UX together. It was a talk that I only knew I would definitely be doing a few weeks beforehand, so I had a mad rush to interview a bunch of experts in the field and pull together something.
After a few restructures, some last minute resolution tweaks, and a lack of sleep the night before (I even missed the pub crawl the night before), I managed to deliver it without too many hiccups ;-)
I had an overwhelming reaction from my peers — whether newbies, or peers that I respect (including Gillian), and it gave me faith that this was a subject worth exploring over the next few years.
You can catch my slides here, the reaction here, and the video (it kinda needs to be experienced away from the slides alone for full effect) when it’s up.
A great event that put Interactions back on track
This was an Interactions event that had to battle the negative reaction to last year’s in Toronto, and prove that this was still a relevant and important conference for the User Experience community. This event in Amsterdam was an exhibition of great curation, excellent venue, and small details (eg, the umbrellas and the charging points) that would make a huge difference to the conference experience.
As always there was mixed quality, but I found myself less frustrated and angry than in previous years. There was less preaching about design saving the world, and more practical takes on what to do to make our practice better. I only hope that next year’s event in San Francisco will live up to the hype in the bay area and show the rest of the world how progressive it can be.
