From extended realities to beyond the human
Pushing the limits of interaction design at IxD23
In the call for proposals behind the Interaction 23 speaker program, design practitioners were challenged to rethink how people interact with each other, technological artifacts, and the environment. We wanted to collect their reflections on the state of the union in the discipline, enable them to iterate on key learnings, and propose prominent avenues to move interaction design forward.
We received many thought-provoking submissions that contemplate the way humans interact in physical and virtual environments with each other, non-human entities, and the world.
For those of you interested in interaction design practices beyond mainstream perspectives, here are 3 thematic areas of discussion you can expect at the conference.
1) Extended Realities
If your work revolves around Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Realities, or you are simply keen on exploring this space, you might want to consider attending “There’s a virtual elephant in the room” by Emma Margarita Erenst. Emma is an interdisciplinary designer, illustrator, and lecturer from Israel committed to creating digital experiences around cultural heritage through emerging technologies and visual storytelling. Through a set of case studies, she promises to show the audience how to use the components of a story when designing immersive spatial experiences.
For practical tips on how to design interactions in extended realities, check out “How to design the interfaces of the future” by Matt Corrall, a design director at Ultraleap, a company that develops hand tracking and haptic technologies for a variety of use cases including AR and VR. Matt will review the real-world examples and offer do’s and don’ts when it comes to spatial UI design.
For more mixed realities inspiration, join “Follow the sweet spot” by Anika Kronberger and Daniel Fabry, who will describe the challenges and learnings of working on a large-scale mixed reality project at the Center of Science Activities in Graz, Austria. They will share their reflections on the intricacies of the design process when engaging in the development and planning of interactive exhibits and design spaces.
2) More-Than-Human Interactions
We received an overwhelming number of proposals exploring interactions beyond human-centered paradigms in design — specifically, for non-human entities and the natural world. If you are interested in exploring these emergent design perspectives, Brenda Laurel’s keynote on Day 1, “Designing Interactions with the Earth”, would be a good start. This nicely transitions to “True Natural Interaction” on the second day by Dutch product designer Stijn Ossevoort. Through reviewing his own portfolio of interactive wearable devices, he reflects on the inclusivity in interaction design departing “from the modernists’ views of prediction, manipulation, and control.”
Day 3 offers a lineup of design researchers from Zürich University of the Arts, who share their recent interaction design efforts enabling interaction with soils and their microbial species in-situ in the talk “Microbes-Soil-Human Interfaces: Designing for the Field Interactions” by Duy Bui and Laurin Schaffner. Joëlle Bitton, in her talk “Streamlines of Otherness,” proposes to look beyond utility and efficiency in the products of interaction design. Taking materiality as the center of her inquiry, she presents a case study of interactive fabrication using metaphors of decay and abandonment.
3) Positive Change Through Design
Many talks also touch on creating positive change in society through design. Jill Lin, Head of Interaction Design at LEGO, reflects on the role of play in interaction design in her talk “Reshape how we design Interactions — with possibility, responsibility, and Play.” Design ethnographer Kelly Goto and accessibility consultant Colin Wong bring insights and best practices on co-designing with the blind community in “Voice UX Co-Creation & Ideation with the Blind Community.”
Alex Wright, Head of UX at Google News, in “Regenerative UX: Reimagining Interaction Design for a Post-Capitalist World,” explores ways to help practitioners incorporate more sustainable and long-term perspectives into their work based on his six-year research project with over 100 UX practitioners.
The above are some of the talks within the Interaction 23 sub-theme “(Re)designing interaction design.” There are more on this subject, which don’t fit under a specific theme but are certainly worth your attention. Hopefully, these are a starting point for you and help engage conversations on the future directions of interaction design. Come discuss with us, at Interaction 23 in Zürich. The event is also a hybrid one — the first of its kind organized by IxDA — so if you’re unable to make it in-person, you can get your online tickets here.
Dr. Anton Fedosov is an interaction design researcher at the People and Computing Lab at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. His research interests lie at the intersection of social aspects of ubiquitous computing, collaborative economy, and user experience design of interactive systems and services. Anton is a program committee member for the Interaction 23 conference.
