When I read the theme of the interaction 23 conference at first I was unsure what to expect. Trusting the IxDA community events standard I assumed that we are not going to only hear about the latest Artifical Intelligence hype but will discuss a wider span of topics.
Brenda Laurel opened the conference with relatable examples on how various disciplines think to tackle the results of climate change. Across these examples she tried to find commonalities that help us to design more positive interactions with earth. This confirmed my assumption and put me at ease and ready to soak up all the content at interaction 23.
Speaking of at ease; Zurich has welcomed me from its best side. It was crisp, cold but partially sunny and no rain. The conference center Kongresshaus Zurich was perfectly situated in the center of Zurich, next to the lake, and provided excellent amenities and atmosphere. The travel pass on the back of the conference badge allowed temporary free travel, which eased the burden of cost.
The queues for lunch were just long enough to stay at ease and you could meet new people or catch up with others. The food was probably the best food I ever had on a conference. In short, the IxDA Zürich team did deliver a superbly organised conference & interaction week with much thought. My service design score is 9 of 10, just dropping a point for the coffee bottleneck.
The crowd of the conference was diverse in age, the usual bell curve with practitioners in the mid-20s to 50s but with plenty of people representing boths upper & lower ends. It was diverse in origin, subjectively measured by my eye, it definitely did not feel like a white people conference. There was obviously a slight dominance of people attending from countries around Switzerland but the mix felt great.
The vibe of the conference was super friendly. There was no rushing on the coffee, food, theatres and always a considerate human gesture. It felt natural to start interacting with other people, especially unusual for an introvert like me. Ultimately, I met a lot of fascinating people and had great conversations with the full spectrum of junior to super experience interaction design people. So many interesting people in our field.
My plead to everyone, do go out and attend the interaction conference if your domain is close to your heart. The community is global, up to date and really well organised. This was my first interaction conference as I always missed out getting tickets for this very early conference during the year. I’d also like to send big thanks to Boon Yew Chew, for introducing me to people, and to Laura Dantonio, who told me about the morning run at ON HQ. Shout out to Mike from ON for showing us around their beautiful office and taking a 5km run with Florian Hartmann and me.
Design the undefined or Undesign the defined left me thinking along the themes of designing for cyborgs, robots, our planet, human memory, synchronicity (to connect humans), play, science, indigenous understanding, cooperatives and why designers can save lives but not by themselves. So many excellent talks but a few I’d like to highlight as they resonate still strongly with me:
Nicolas Nova’s two year long ethnography study of smartphone shops ‘Dr Smartphone’ and the real work they are doing on a socio-economic level was one of them. Fascinating. Go get the free ebook https://hal.science/hal-03106034 and read Boon Chews excellent sketchnotes below.
Michal Rinotts talk about Interpersonal Motor Synchronisation (Paper — paywall but you can contact her for access). It amazed me considering the pandemic we lived through and still struggle finding new decent ways to work better together. She showed how remote synchronisation through apps works alongside in-person synchronisation experiments of two riders (video). This made me think why we often struggle to get in sync with partners at work across disciplines and how hard it is to get the sync right.
Xiaowei Wang introduced me to the concept of impossible images and how these have been created through colonial expedition and empire building. On the example of graphical wallpapers designed by William Morris she described the impossibility of these nature prints. Eventually, she took the leap and laid out that the impossible images are surfacing again through impossible images created by AI like DallE. See her art project on this topic here.
There have been so many excellent talks and I made connections to such a variety of different practicioners and had the opportunity to exchange thoughts and debate the talks’ topics. This is the real power of the interaction week in my opinion. Coming together and exchange our experiences and broaden our horizon. Do go and attend one of the Interaction Design Associations (IxDA) interaction conferences as they are excellently organized, curated and foster a great community. The next one is in Sydney Australia and tickets are on sale https://interaction24.ixda.org/.
Until next time.
