My top 10 talks from Interaction 23

A summary of the talks that inspired and engaged me from Interaction 23 in Zurich

Jason Mesut
10 min readMar 13, 2023

It’s been three years since I have written a top talks post from Interaction. Something about the online format as a result of the pandemic just killed my motivation, but I think it’s time to rekindle it given it was a return to form that so many of us needed.

I wanted to share my round-up of my favourite talks from the conference. As quickly as possible while it is fresh. Forgive the photo dump and short commentary. Gotta get back to the regular groove of things.

Previous summaries

You can catch my previous summaries from 2020, 2019 (top 10), (next 19), 2018, 2016, and 2014. Must find my other notes. Please bear with me — I’m tired, overloaded and started writing this while delayed in Zurich airport. And then let it fester for almost a week. There’s a pattern here. Three years ago I was stuck in Milan. I’ll be updating with videos when they’ re available, elaborating when have got time, and editing when I have some clarity.

Ten of the best

Here goes, in almost order of value to me, I’ve selected the following (yes, I know it’s a long list — sorry) based on the limited set I experienced live at the conference. There were so many more that I didn’t fully engage (not necessarily because they weren’t great) with or attend.

  1. Designing for Interpersonal Synchronization By Michal Rinott
  2. What is (job) love? By Hertje Brodersen
  3. Defining identity and impact at the end by Joe Macleod
  4. A day in the life of a Dr. Smartphone By Nicolas Nova
  5. Spatial Interaction — (re)define the relationship between human and computers in physical spaces By Hideaki Matsui
  6. Improving Interactions with our stored memories by Mark Zeh
  7. The New Breed By Kate Darling
  8. Plot armour. The story contributing to our successes and failures. By Dean Broadley
  9. Designing Interactions with the Earth by Brenda Laurel
  10. Hiring & Onboarding in Turbulent Times FTW By Russ Unger

Let’s dig-in..

Designing for Interpersonal Synchronization By Michal Rinott

This was my favourite talk as it beautifully blended theory and prototyping of interactive experiences that were cohered by the idea of synchronization.

There was one example where two bicycles were stuck together facing each other and two people would try to cycle in-sync to create a pleasant soundscape.

‘Two riders’ is a great installation for intimacy and synchronicity

Another example showed A bicycle + VR headset that allows you to fly with birds. I’m a sucker for the more physical-digital quirky experiments and prototypes, but I reckon most people would get something out of this talk. Please, please, please, more of this sort of stuff. Alongside all the grander world-changing social impact stuff of course.

Loved the transformation into bird you get when you synchronize with the other birds

What is (job) love? By Hertje Brodersen

Hertje delivered an incredibly calm, resource rich, mild provocation of a talk. Challenging attitudes to work, using a frame of unrequited love, and pulling out tensions between work passion and exploitation.

Some example tensions through popular quotes
I’d love to dig into this more
Interesting changes over the years in terms of labour and work
Cute graph charting changes over time
Venns FTW
Gotta love Mike Monteiro for quotes like this
Interesting tension
Love it
A collection of resources that fed into Hertje’s research

Defining identity and impact at the end from Joe Macleod

I’ve been a huge fan of Joe Macelod and his Ends work ever since I saw an early version of his talk before he delivered it at Interaction 16 in Helsinki.

One of the End Gaps

Over the years, Joe has really progressed his thinking and his educational offers. In his typical humorous, colloquial and dry delivery, Joe shone a light on the gaps in discussion around climate, the gaps in emotional communication in advertising vs. off boarding.

Introducing the Legacy Number

And then he introduced a new tool called the legacy number with accompanying charts that illustrated the visibility to the consumer, over time, of products they consumed vs how much time they were in manufacture and ultimately landfill after the short ‘experienced’ time.

Legacy Number charts for baked beans and cookies

There’s something truly magical here I feel that can help us contextualise the notion of waste and identity. Such a great talk full of data, humour, and useful ways to communicate the legacy of the products and servcies we consume.

A day in the life of a Dr. Smartphone By Nicolas Nova

The legendary researcher and Near Future Laboratory scientist Nicolas Nova took us through the world of smartphone repairs. In some of the richer cities of the world in Switzerland.

Interesting to see software issues being supported like hardware ones
Due to the changes in new tech, repair organizations have to decompose and reverse engineer the hardware development quicker and quicker to support repairs
Some nice reflections

Spatial Interaction — (re)define the relationship between human and computers in physical spaces By Hideaki Matsui

There’s no doubt Hideaki was riding on the coat tails of being from Google and working on things like The Nest Home Hub. But despite the simplicity of his messages, his slides were simple and gorgeous as he related some important interaction thinking with the world of proxemics. Even acting out interactions with someone else on stage to talk around personal and intimate space.

A little overview of proxemics
Non-verbal communication
Using sensors to understand non-verbal signals — what could possibly go wrong?
Connecting different modalities and sensors to proxemic zones
I didn’t actually realize that the UI adapts to who views it
I had noticed the UI change based on proximity
I hadn’t realized the Home Hub was gesture controllable

Sometimes, you get a talk that doesn’t say much that is new to you, but they package it up so well, you feel like it could be very useful for others. And this one had those beautiful slides too. It was a lovely light and useful geek out on interaction.

Improving Interactions with our stored memories by Mark Zeh

This was one of the first talks I attended, and I had high hopes. Despite my hopes being oriented around new solutions for memory (boy, do I need it), I appreciated the peppy tour through memory theory with some useful insight along the way that paves the way for further exploration. Would have loved to see what he is doing with all this. Maybe for a future or longer talk. But it’s certainly one that has stuck with me.

We’ve all been there right — he later realtes this challenge to how we encode information
An important reminder
Recency and forgetting theory
Interesting metamemory perspective
Some important theory to signpost possible memory aids across location, objects and stories
The power of sketching and writing to help memory encoding
Other ways to encode memory
Some useful strategies

The New Breed By Kate Darling

Kate has been one of my favourite speakers over the years and this year she seemed even more polished and funny. As an expert on emotional robots and robot ethics, her insights are incredibly valuable and amusing. It was an almost perfect talk.

I wasn’t sure what was new here, as I felt some similarities to her previous talk at Interaction (hence it’s lower in the list), but it provided a refreshed view on where things are at and how we might benefit of thinking of robot and artificial intelligence being closer to animal intelligence than human intelligence. Alas, as one attendee challenged, maybe using these analogues is far too limited. Kate agreed, but familiarity and love for animals, she argued, was helpful to engage others.

This was related to a story of getting attendees at a conference to play with these robot dinosaurs and then try to smash them to pieces. Noone could do it. The empathy was too much.
A potential for the future? Guilt-trippin’ needy robots.
The infamous robot seal that gives comfort to people in need of support

Plot armour. The story contributing to our successes and failures. By Dean Broadley

It felt a little odd seeing the new president of the IxDA giving a talk at the conference. But it was also a great opportunity to get a bigger window into Dean, the way he thinks and the way he carries himself as a ‘full time human’. Can’t wait to catch up 1:1 with him on all that.

In this talk, Dean used the frame of ‘Plot Armour’ as a way to talk about the internal and external stories we experience as we move through the world. He broke down the the thinking into a framework that included ‘reality distortion’, ‘legacy lies’, ‘cognitive warping’, and ‘straight bullshit’. I especially liked the take on bullshit vs ‘dishonesty’ regarding the nature of awareness of misinformation.

This definitely stirred some thinking that I am curious in exploring through my coaching and my own self-reflections, but I was very impressed at the delivery and framing around a complex topic.

A definition of plot armour — had never heard this before, but you can relate to so many things
I’m behind this message for sure. Or semi-sure.
Hadn’t really thought about it like this. I like this framing.
A sumamry of the four aspects of plot armour

Designing Interactions with the Earth by Brenda Laurel

The legendary Brenda Laurel returned to the Interaction stage after 12 years to open the conference. I remember dearly watching her talk in Boulder. This time, Brenda shared inspiring stories and innovations that related to regenerative agriculture and design. Working with nature and the earth, rather than against. I was pleased to hear such a positive tone of possibility rather than doom, to open the conference and set the tone.

And, I was very pleased to learn about the anti-methane producing effects of kelp, amongst many other things.

The legendary Brenda Laurel
Artificial wood!
Useful map of impact per calorie and production
Cultured salmon, amongst many examples of cultured food that can taste good and limit harm to nature
Loved these solar panels over the river. Not only do they generate electricity but keep the water cooler limiting evaporation.

Hiring & Onboarding in Turbulent Times FTW by Russ Unger

Russ Unger delivered a fantastic straight talking, knowledge bomb of useful strategies and tactics for better hiring and onboarding.

Breaking down some key parts of the process and experience, and challenging some ‘traditions’ in hiring and on-boarding with more productive and human-oriented frames, he delivered one of the most practical leadership and Ops-oriented talks of the conference.

Gotta love Hexagons
Repositioning job description rip-offs to performance profiles
From random questions to proper interview processes
Neater hiring hexagons
Summary of tips

Once again, apologies for the dump. There has just been too much going on for more reflective thought on all this, but I hope it comes.

And keep your eyes and ears out for the videos when they come.

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Jason Mesut

I help people and organizations navigate their uncertain futures. Through coaching, futures, design and innovation consulting.