My top talks from Interaction 20
A summary of the talks that inspired and engaged me from Interaction 20 in Milan
I look forward to the Interaction conference every year. It’s perfectly timed to mess with my new year resolutions, and re-set my head for the year that follows. Usually, in a good way. For example, I also just published this post to contextualise the opportunity to continue the discourse between Interaction 20 and 21.
I wanted to share my round-up of my favourite themes and talks from the conference. You can catch my previous ones from 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 stuck in Milan airport. There was a lot of content, conversations and consumption of meat, pasta, wine, rice, chocolate and mushrooms. I’ll be updating with videos when they’ re available, elaborating when have got time, and editing when I have some clarity.
Here goes, in almost order of value to me, I’ve selected the following (yes, I know it’s a long list — sorry)
- Harriet Wakelam
Pragmatic, engaging and accessible design fiction to tackle climate challenges for and opportunities for an insurer - Mary Park
Code switching, and managing bias for voice interfaces - Giorgia Luipi
Seeking more beautiful and human data - Stuart Candy
Highlighting opportunities for designers in futures - Marco Steinberg
The exec level argument for designers’ interventions - Adeola Enigbokan
Architectures of trust and designing encounters between people - Jan Knikker
Transforming behaviours and culture through architecture - Robert Fabricant
Developing a compelling and accessible narrative for interaction design - Matt Cottam
Looking back to look forwards - Simone Rebaudengo
Objects are people too
Next 5
- Dan Hon
Why Science fiction is a bad frame for design - Ben Reason
A future framing for design - Audrey Tang
New levels of community participation - Juhan Sonin
Health data and platforms - Scott Nazarian
Abstract models for
Stuart Candy — the Futures Fellow
After an intense workshop with fellow local leaders from around the world I managed to catch the infamous Stuart Candy. I wasn’t disappointed. He whizzed through his background, some context of futures and the great opportunity presented by Designers getting more involved with his world. He was funny, insightful, and very open to questions and challenges. As designers get more involved with ‘Futures and Fictions’ work, it helps to get a little more context from the non-designers in that space. You can catch more of Stuart on this video and this video.
A valuable framework for contextualising futures work from settings to stuff.
Giorgia Lupi—the human side of data
More details and watch the video of the talk (start here around 33 mins)
Giorgia opened the conference and blew the audience away with her outstanding and engaging body of work in the fields of data visualisation and information design.
You could be impressed by the aesthetics of her work. Or her lovely illustrations of process.
But though it was somewhat suppressed, there were some lovely messages as well. Sometimes data should be represented not just for efficiency and ease of use, but to connect and resonate. To tell stories beyond the obvious. And we need to think about how we can capture and represent broader data with more meaning.
Dan Hon: Computer, Stop: Why Star Trek only goes so far and we need to try harder than science fiction
I’d watched a talk from Dan at Picnic, Amsterdam, many years ago. He was a copywriter, working with legendary W&K talking about transmedia storytelling, It was smart, funny and engaging. I’ve followed his work ever since, whether its twitter or Code for America. He’s always been one of the sharpest and most entertaining commentators on modern tech.
This was his first talk for a number of years, but it didn’t show. Using Star Trek as his device for illustrating the failings of using science fiction for influencing our UI, he made important points more resonant through his use of humour.
The audience will never un-see bad PowerPoint charts, and systems architecture diagrams being photoshopped onto famous star wars scenes. But his messages were powerful in themselves.
Simone Rebaudengo: Everything is someone
Simone is one of my favourite people from the IxDA community. Many people would remember his legendary award-winning student project about a needy toaster.
Or his VR installation in Lyon where you could see through the eyes of a Roomba, or fan.
Or even his previous talks that included the classic ‘teacher of algorithms’. Remixing old and new content could have been boring on paper. But with his ever-evolving narrative and affable style he manages to put audacious ideas out into the world with a little humour. Ideas that could help us think around some of the problems in the world. Watch his talk. Follow his work. Get his book. And open your mind to different possibilities. I believe we need a lot of that right now.
He also used the talk to launch his new company, and he may even be coming to London which I am personally very excited about.
Adeola Enigbokan: Architectures of trust
Watch the video here (start around 22mins in)
Using her work and some references from movies like Arrival, Adeola outlined a . trust protocol architecture that is relevant for us all in our work. The architectures of trust framework she laid out, sets the context for engagement between different parties so they can connect and find the value between each other.
Using some storytelling around the mythical ‘Eldorado’ she contextualised the battles we all face. Whether it’s colonisation, meeting new people, or having a meeting with a stakeholder.
Audrey Tang: How Taiwan achieves SDGs together
I was a little shocked when the keynote on the second day would involve Audrey doing a Zoom call into the conference with some sli.do interaction. I’ve seen sli.do work excellently with a Finnish audience at Joint Futures conference. But even Zoom. My dear Zoom. Saviour of remote meetings., It’s great but its not perfect. I was astounded it worked. And it worked well. Together, it was somewhat magical. With Audrey seeing a comment about talking too fast, she acknowledge it and slowed down. This helped with the some moderately choppy audio.
Now, let’s take a minute. Someone from Taiwan was able to deliver an important keynote to over 1,000 people in Milan. The connection held. She got feedback. She adjusted her pace. She answered questions. It worked. It was a fucking miracle, and the technicians should be proud. I’m sure many of you readers appreciate what an epic feat this was, even in 2020.
Let’s not forget the content. It was super valuable, and not dissimilar to the format of the talk. Dialogue with citizens. Getting data across large datasets to understand differences. It was truly epic work. Using basic and common technologies. It was fast. As were her responses to the questions. But it’s definitely worth going back to.
Marco Steinberg: Plan Z: A Case for redesign
Marco gave the audience a presentation suitable for other disciplines. Although it connected to designer value systems, it positioned design as a critical factor in transforming our world. he made the point that we ned to see change in weeks and months, not years and decades. But it needs to happen without disrupting the now.
Harriet Wakelam: Reality makers — creating the pixels of a safer future
It’s hard when you get stuck in conversations — good or bad — and you really want to get to a talk. I only missed one part of one talk I went to, and annoyingly it was my favourite. I’m biased, because of mutual friends, and a familiar British accent. But Harriet delivered the sort of talk that I have been hoping for these past years.
Yes, it was about the environment.
Yes, it had some design fiction-y things.
Tick. Tick.
But it also found a way to bridge the gaps between extreme challenge and creating effective models and props to engage others.
She showed how her team used objects from the future. How she combined them with emotional audio personas. How she supported this all with solid rationale, conceptual models and measured justifications.
It wasn’t just eye candy. It wasn’t just pretty personas. It wasn’t just wishful thinking. It was measured, convincing, emotionally powerful and it’s helping.
Ben Reason: Design in the Anthropocene
I know Ben from London. I’m familiar with some of his backstory. From experimenting with being better for the environment, to engaging with Extinction Rebellion. But this wasn’t a plea. It wasn’t guilt-inducing. It wasn’t activism. Instead, he took a more measured approach. He established some core basics of design practices. And then he gave them a little twist based on theory and knowledge from other fields and books. It allowed him to first connect, and then shift to a more hopeful foundation. It just lacked the sort of examples that Harriet benefited from, But I can’t wait for the longer form version of that.
Robert Fabricant
I’ve been a fan of Robert since Interaction 11. He and his army of thoughtful Frogs were be ever-present at every Interaction I went to. Often lofty, and high brow, possibly a bit too intellectual for some, their talks have often stood the test of time. He even had the nobility to put his name on one of the talks alongside his teammates, possibly to help give them a better chance to share their voice. But then, after a brief intro, he literally stepped back from the stage. I’ve never seen anything like it.
That aside, his moment was coming. And he did the most beautifully crafted presentation I have seen for a while. He took the words from the conference theme. And then used it as a framework for his narrative.
Alongside examples from his recent book ‘user friendly’ that is designed to help offer an accessible narrative for design. Going backwards through macintosh and to chairs. And he made some clear points. It was high gravitas. It was straight forward. It was necessary., And it’s inspired some thinking that I think is critical for design’s progression.
Matt Cottam — Design Nonfiction
I first met Matt many years ago at the Picnic conference in Amsterdam. Alongside notable others like Dan Hon, he’s often been present at Interaction.
Recently, Matt’s started publishing well-shot videos of infamous design legends as part of Tellart’s Design Nonfiction project. Through conversations with figureheads he has charted some of the history of design, and potential paths forwards. Playing out a mix tape approach inspired by a recent Beastie Boys audio book, he punctuating his perspectives, and models, with extracts from some of the videos. It was possibly a bit too nostalgic, and possibly a bit too white and male for some. But it was a reality. A perspective. A rich one. And it compelled me to actually engage in more of his content. Initially I thought I would have liked to see more focus on the new. The future(s). But, on reflection maybe his strongest message was implicit. Look back at the misfits. The crazy ones. Remember the influence of the small teams. Get closer to materials again. Feel the grain. Master the materials. Sometimes, it;’s not all about the answers being spelt out.
Mary Parks
I was compelled to attend Mary’s talk after some slack dialogue before the conference,. She asked a question related to her talk and I was instantly engaged. She was also in the multi-modal track which appealed to my old-skool geeky interaction me.
Despite this excitement, I had a wobble really early on. She made is do that awkward exercise of turning to someone close to you and introducing yourself., I hate that shit. I really do. I mean, I love meeting people. But on my terms.
And then, she connected my excitement with my angst. We had to do the same exercise again with the same person, but using a different accent. Ideally one we use in a different context. From posher Brit using patronising pigeon english, to more wide-boy cockney geezer. Poor Valentina didn’t understand a word of it.
This could have been a superficial stunt. But it sat poignant in my memory. And I’m stealing it for something.
She used some of the learnings to talk around a few key areas. From contextual bias through to priming. And the effects of these when it comes to prototyping and testing audio/conversational interfaces. She played this out, to advise around limiting talking at the start of a voice related usability test. Your way of talking — pace, accent, words used — would affect the words they use in a test. She talked about how people with posher accents were more likely to get away with more mistakes. And plenty more. I’m definitely going back.
Juhan Sonin: Own Your Experience, An Open Source Path
I think i’ve found one of my favourite people. I’d seen his great talk in Toronto about hGraph. I shared it with IxDA London in one of our reduxes. I was instructed by fellow Group of Human colleague, Lisa deBettencourt, to watch his talk. And then I met him in the bar at the conference hotel after a long day. He was self-deprecating, interesting, opinionated, animated and knowledgable. It turned out he had worked with my old boss, and many peers on various things related to the NHS many years ago.
And then watched his talk. It demanded more time. Possibly a slower pace given the density of the materials. But it was beautiful, poignant and gave much more colour to the notions of data and trust than I have ever seen before. Despite visible nerves before, it was an incredible forced delivery. A little antagonistic, a little provocative, but I like that kinda stuff when it’s coming from a good place. And this was coming from a great place. I discussed, debated and argued with him in Turin. But he certainly left another indelible mark on me for the future.
Harsha Babu: The Anatomy of Urban experiments
I’m a big fan of Harsha. He’s spoken at least one or two IxDA London events with really insightful and interesting mobility and automotive work. He always came across thoughtful and reflective. And his style was certainly calmer than other speakers I have met. So I’m biased once more. But he’s good enough to go to EV innovator, Arrival, and be involved in many of ustwo’s most interesting mobility work. Through reference to censored examples, and a more open perspective on Ford’s GoPark, he illustrated different critical aspects of mobility.
Especially aspects like engaging local government, rethinking the system and thinking through a model of the five cities. Unfortunately, some of his messages were constrained by the censorship that he was probably subjected to, and his calmer style probably didn’t land as well compared to others.
Jan Knikker: MVRDV: Creative Transformation
Jan closed out one of the days of the conference with an intense and upbeat portfolio overview of his work.
The messages were occasionally lifted out, but it was fantastic to see such an abundance of interesting, beautiful work with stories that give character to the endeavours we’re all familiar with.
From generative design and working with Lego, to compromising and adapting to different needs and pressures, his work showed the challenges of what happens after ‘the designers’ are engaged. From libraries, to the Rotterdam market that has helped rejuvenate a whole area.
For me, currently working in similar urbanism fields of work, it was deeply fascinating and relevant. Maybe harder for some. Maybe too much work. But for me, after a day of heavy content and thinking, it was just what I needed.
Scott Nazarian — Design is a social affair
Scott is one of the smartest, inquisitive and reflective people i’ve met at Interaction. At my first conference in Boulder in 2011, David Sherwin, Scott and I discussed the concept of a talk that Scott delivered in the conference the next year. A super interesting frame of building a better starship.
I’d had the odd re-connection with Scott and he was always interested in discussions on a more cerebral level. Unfortunately for some, that just didn’t connect with some when he delivered his presentation on-stage. Possibly too cerebral. Too abstract. Too dense. Or too abstract. Maybe too much reliance on rich verbal narrative over slides that could better punctuate the points. To agree with some of the comments I heard from others, I also have to defend Scott’s position. Not everything has to be spelled out. Sometimes we need to think deeper.
That aside, he has the most visually intriguing visuals to illustrate his main themes. I’ll be honest. i didn’t completely understand them, but they were illustrating very abstract things. To the point from Giorgia, not everything has to be a familiar format, accessible, and designed for quicker ‘grokking’. This one was a mind bender and stirrer. It demands another listen.
So, I hope that wasn’t too much of a mess. I hope to come back to this post and clean it up, provide better narrative and just make it better in time.
