Interaction20: some thoughts after the conference

Interaction20 closed two weeks ago: it seems to have marked the beginning of a new phase of the discipline, but it has been penalized by the lack of specificity and by the absence of Milanese studies.

Interaction20 has just ended. We had fun; we met a lot of people — new and old friends we only see at big conferences like these — we danced, opened our Milanese studio and held a workshop on the future of the city.

Now, however, it’s time for taking stocks, and the following thoughts come from Luca Mascaro, our CEO, and Andrea Caperni, Senior Designer in our studio in Rome.

We have been delighted with the choice of Italy and Milan as the conference venue. It rewards the commitment, maturity and dynamism of the discipline in a context — like the Italian one — where design still rhymes mainly with a physical product and where, therefore, interaction design has had to struggle to rise.

Every time, edition after edition, it seems to us that Interaction is a conference within a conference: there is the program of the speeches, of course, but also another conference arises during discussions and meetings with other designers. Powerful energy burst out: a thousand and more people questioning, discussing, proposing how to improve what we cherish the most: the experience.

We have also noticed a change in the general direction of the discipline. A few years ago, the main issue was to affirm the ability of design to make a difference, and that was possible only id design would have been a partner with business and integrated into business processes. Well, we got the chair at the table, and now what?

Now the scenario has changed. Climate and energy crisis, participation crisis, politics… Interaction has always had a critical talent: to command the agenda of the design community and influence its future developments.

Two weeks ago, we saw the conference refocus the discipline towards design for the future, or instead for the futures, from a human-centric point of view. Innovation is no longer about product or service but has shifted to a systemic dimension and the ability to imagine new futures and systems that support the transformation of society and human beings.

Designing for the future, however, also means opening up to new disciplines — collaborating with artificial intelligence, robotics, data science — and also trying to imagine how they could coexist in a unitary dimension applied not only to business but to society at large. Let’s think about the speech about how generative design has contributed to the design of the Rotterdam market, design automation, the management of personal data and privacy in general, the political issue and how to create a regulatory framework that admits complexity and defends the rights of human beings. You only have to scroll through the programme to appreciate the complexity and variety of the issues involved.

So far, the conference was entirely consistent with its title: A New Dawn. But here also arise the most thorny problems and issues.

The conference lacked depth. We discussed many important issues, but, perhaps because they are so new and emerging, they are still addressed with shallowness: putting the questions on the table, not proposing directions nor solutions.

We are still debating the ethical dimension of the discipline, its implications for people in a somewhat abstract way. It would be nice to see, and maybe it will happen in Montreal next year, a step forward also from a methodological point of view. How do we actually deal with complexity? What tools do we deploy? How do we evolve the way we practice design?

Participation, however, deserves separate consideration. We were one of the few design studios in Milan that decided to support the conference actively.

“Events like this must be supported by the commitment of the hosting community — ends Luca — it is not enough to be seen only at open design studios. Where were the other Italian studios apart from Experientia and us?”