My favourite systems related talks from Interaction 18
I’m still decompressing after experiencing the intense pressure chamber that was Interaction 18. As I write this in Lyon, my mind is exhausted by all the conversations and the talks. For good reasons. But they wage war with my own thoughts and experiences.
The questions going through my mind relate to common existential crises. Am I getting too old? Too cynical? Is it only me that disagrees? What would I say if I was on stage? What could I learn from those slide designs?
Have we reached peak slide design?
I’m a designer. And I have to communicate. To peers. To clients. To colleagues. Slide design does matter. What could I learn from those slide designs? I’d say not that much. Not that I am as good as those talking. After a steady increase in slide quality, I think we hit our limit this conference. There were solid slides. Clear. Vibrant. But nothing jaw dropping. For me at least. But that’s good. I am seeing some patterns being mastered. Like use of videos on loop in the background with narrative over the topic.
A bias to filter
But that’s not why you are here. You want to know what one person thinks were the best talks. And that’s a problem in itself. Who am I? Why do you trust my prioritisation? I chose the talks based on my biases. Based on the titles. Based on the talks that followed or preceded them. You see, they were often in pairs and it’s hard to move between rooms between the pairs. This was a nice idea. But I rarely saw it work well.
My summaries here are based on my biases too. People I like or know. Topics that resonated with my beliefs or interest areas.
Caveats over. Here is a list of what to watch out for and why. With a heavy bias on systems thinking and service.
The Oppenheimer moment — Alan Cooper
With the title of the Oppenheimer moment, and not being familiar with J. Robert Oppenheimer I didn’t really know what to expect. Someone had mentioned something just before about ethics, and I died a little inside.
Alan started to describe scenarios that referenced Facebook, Amazon and AirBnB. Not by name. But we all knew. I feared things were going to get nasty. I looked over at the designer I knew who had recently started at Facebook. I could see him feeing uncomfortable. I thought for all the designers that had travelled over the Atlantic to be here. To come and listen to this man. Those working for companies that had sponsored this very event. Was Alan using his new found freedom to give his biggest IdontgiveafuckImgonnasaywhatIwant presentation yet?
Thankfully, the answer was no. Despite the tone of the talk being one of fear. It was also one of pragmatism. And empathy beyond the user. Because he recognises, and called out clearly. That there’s no real individual to blame for Facebook influencing the US election. It’s not your fault little Facebook designer of like buttons. There’s noone to blame.
Like a ship with 100 million tiny holes. There are just weaknesses in the system that can change the end outcomes beyond our own anticipation. Unintended consequences. Caused by what Alan calls ‘externalities’. Like the choice of a two digit year format for Visual Basic that Alan chose to improve the efficiency of the system. And thus contributing to the Y2K bug.
He gave us some initial frameworks for thinking with. And several times reinforced the the point that when being asked around going for Option A, or Option B. Take the time to think though an Option C.
He didn’t quite deliver the tools we need and were teased with. He didn’t give us the answers we needed. But he raised the right questions. And gave us a new handle of thinking like an ‘ancestor’ to guide us. I’m not sure I buy ‘ancestry’ as a metaphor for what he was describing. But I was grateful of him bringing nuance to the world of ethics in design. A world so full of entitled, guilt-ridden babble that I am getting tired of experiencing. And the frameworks are useful, but we need more. It’s just too early to lock down the toolkit just now. Let’s start workin together to build it.
Designing for systems — Valerie Pegon
Valerie is someone I knew back in London. I joined Plan after she had left. So, I missed working with her. After she joned Dassault Systems, she’d started on a journey to work between design and systems thinking.
In her talk, she excited those that appreciate the challenge, with the tools she had learned to use to model the systems she was working on.
True dynamic models. Ones with relationships to the complexity, and don’t just distil it down to static diagrams like Customer Journey Maps or Blueprints.
I urge you to watch this short talk to realise the gap we have in our toolset to design services and systems effectively. And please share examples if you have them.
Reshaping the city — Belen Palacios
Another person I know. She comes to IxDA London events. And she practiced a version of her talk the preceding work at our Predux event. A very different version. Through externalising her thoughts and sharing with our community — experimenting — she got feedback. Not destructive. Nothing that required her doing what she did. But it obviously made her rethink her whole presentation for the better.
Her intro was a thing of beauty, as she verbally annotated her videos of arriving in Lyon. She decoded some of the complexity of the city from a series of small interactions and observations.
She then, more subtly than in her practice, made her points about participation in city change. Getting people to stand up and stand down based on degrees of participation, exposed how little we as more engaged than most members of the public.
Both parts as an intro and context setting for her argument that we should be doing more experimental thinking.
Cultural bias in Design — Farai Madzima
It was great seeing a black guy (person of colour) on stage as we started closing out the conference. You could hear the buzz around diversity blow around the social media as he talked.
But, though his title drew reference to his African roots. And his references of an African Jazz musician and activist named Hugh Masekela also drew references to similar African beginnings. His point was not one of colour. Or geography. But one of thinking. And thinking style.
To quote Farai, quoting Hugo, around what Miles Davis said to him when he met him in US:
‘Where you come from and who you are makes you unique. And that you need to use that and turn it into something that can teach us something new, and that can give something brand new to the world.”
I guess, there were two main points for me.
Firstly, we need to recognise and respond better to different thinking styles. As we pursue progressive stances, let’s bring in different voices into the room. Something that the conference did fairly well. But something we all still struggle with.
Secondly, that there are a whole range of different aspects of the way that different cultures work and think. He drew on the work of Hofstede and Erin Mayer to illustrate differences in styles as observed from different countries.
Fahei delivered with beautiful grace of engaging storytelling, great use of swearing inspired by the Jazz genius of Miles Davis. A mix of cheap crowd pleasers and in depth points. It wasn’t because he was African. Although, I think it had played a huge part in the praise he got. It was because he was a great presenter. With a serious point to be made. On a topic that affects us all.
And most of all, the thing that I love about a talk is the ‘emptiness’ that is left behind. The gaps that need to be filled. And for me, this talk was laden with them. Most poignantly for me, was the relative absence of the truth that although the styles may be affected by geography. They exist at all scales. In teams. In organisations. In fields of practice. Within someone’s own mind as they deal with the schizophrenis of who they are in their personal ife and the way they act at work. We need to find better ways to identify, and respond to these appropriately if we are to work with others.
To quote Farai:
“If you think that diversity of thought is about different shades of brown or gender, then you’re not paying attention,. You were not paying attention to what the wold needs from our industry. You’re not paying attention to what your colleagues need from you,”
Summarised as:
The MasSive future of transport — Apaar Tuli
I’ve spent the past 5 years interested in the areas of transportation and mobility. Over that time I have worked on an urban mobility service and an on-demand grocery service. Both heavily reliant on mobility and transportation. Both complex systems of vehicles, people, city infrastructure, contracts, context, necessity and laziness. Among hundreds of other things.
So, going to visit Apaar’s talk, I was ready to be disappointed. But I wasn’t at all. He delivered a very well rounded, well reasoned talk with super high quality slick slides. As I said above, this can be important.
He opened with the narrative of how the mass production of cars unintentionally rid the world from the impending doom of rising horse shit in our streets. A great reference back to Alan’s opening around unintended consequences. This one a good one.
He setup the complexity of transportation in the city before clarifying how his work has started to decode that. To observe and probe what people need, and how a city can respond to aggregate transport services to better serve people through a more dynamic multi-modal approach.
He ended, describing a series of cards him and his team have developed, and are developing. They have found ways to decode the complexity. To describe, research and design new services that better support the city of Helsinki.
It was a nice simple solution, that could be extrapolated to other complex services. So, this talk, more than any other felt more complete. And inspirational.
Restoring ‘place’ in the modern market — Alice Fang
One of the biggest surprise talks for me was a talk around Chinese eCommerce. I had expected to hear about the latest in chinese ecommerce innovation and behaviours for the customer. Something that would be interesting from a cultural blindspot perspective. That world continues to surprise me. And much of the Western world completely ignores it. Instead it favours the Valley thinking that ‘seems to’ dominate the world of technology. Seems to, but is a drop in the ocean compared to what goes on in China.
The thing is. I am not that interested in eCommerce. But I was blown away by this talk. Because it shone a light on the different part of the system. The people that make the products. That pack and deliver the goods. The people behind the scenes in this system of trade.
Through photographs and stories, Alice, shone spotlights on the places you often don’t look. The places that contribute to the system that supports the customer. She went deeper than we normally do. Something i’d say is more and more critical. Especially, when we consider the operations that support the service propositions people come up with. I believe we need to design with both in mind, and plenty in between. And I’m glad that many more people are realising this.
More than human-centred design — Anab Jain
Not sure how I forgot this one when I originally posted this article. Anab Jain from the legendary Superflux had some hard messages for our times and emphasised the importance of thinking beyond the human in the system. As Interaction designers we need to think beyond. Some excellent speculative work here including growing food at home.
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