8 lessons from the EuroIA Conference 2018 in Dublin // Part 2
Lesson 5 // Invent the future
Several speakers emphasized the need for a broader field of vision by looking towards the future. In Understanding the future human, Neil Collman questions future human behaviours and attitudes which could influence new product and service adoption. Foresight, defined as the capacity to look to the future to inform decision making today, is key before design. As Wendell Bell said, “There are no future facts”, that is why foresight is key…
Neil Collman detailed the process:
- A possible future is something that exists today. That’s why we need to identify signals to scale (they can be social, technological, environmental, economic, political…). A real example of local disruption with the potential to scale is a possible future that’s here today.
- You have to explore a whole range of alternatives and scenarios with different trends: growth, constraint, transformation, collapse…
- You can tell stories, as a source of provocation: “let’s look at Dani, 32 years old in 2028…”
- Lastly, you must check that it makes sense, designers need to learn, unlearn and relearn…
He fosters designers to seek for patents, signals of change and points out a useful resource: Institute for the future.
In the workshop Once upon a future, Sandra Griffel and Susanne Junglas walked us through fictional narratives and foresight in design. The ideation exercises, though seemingly similar in practice to other UX exercises (cards, brainstorming…), pushed participants to go beyond what is actually possible and look into what could be possible. An unleashing of creativity and sci-fi like ideas emerged, yet did not lead to unusable, silly content.
Many templates and cards were used to lead and develop ideas, and thanks to a specifically designed cross grid (similar to Ellie Ereira’s), participants were able to then organize these ideas based on impact level and feasibility, and thus narrow down concepts to something not only achievable but truly innovative. Every group, though given the same topic to work with, came up with different yet complementary ideas. It is amazing to see how far creativity can go when using the right tools and when allowed to push ourselves to dream a little and gaze into the future.
Similarly, Rob Scott (Cross Reality User Experience: taming the wild west of VR & AR Interaction Patterns) also entices designers to look towards sci-fi for inspiration for their work, which we develop further in our next big takeaway…
Lesson 6 //Embrace new technologies
Multiple speakers underlined the dangers, as well as the new perspectives and opportunities, of new technologies: vocal interfaces, AR and VR, artificial intelligence….
Rob Scott, in Cross Reality User Experience: taming the wild west of VR & AR Interaction Patterns, introduces a framework to help decide what interactions make sense.
He talks about abstract interaction (i.e. using a keyboard), to address constraints, when presence of the user is not practical or for safety and familiarity reasons. Representative interactions (i.e. computer mouse and touch) are ideal when practicality trumps authenticity, when you need speed and presence or to make the user feel like a wizard. Real world gestures are ideal when you need to feel physicality, like in a training experience. This also works when you want to slow down or enhance presence. To conclude, Rob recommends we first start with the story we’re telling, and then, create its intentional interactions.
Franco Papeschi, in Why designers suck at innovation (and what to do to suck less), explores the four traps that make designers fail at innovation projects. He encourages designers to broaden their perspective and re-frame the problem space during the discovery phase. He also suggests exploring potential technologies as part of the research. Additionally, he claims business aspects are too often neglected during design phases. He suggests using proposals and processes as design material, for example, by creating value proposition cards as part of one’s interview tools. Last but not least, he warns against the risk of being stuck in an ivory tower. To do so, he advises working closely with a sponsor for each team in order to transfer knowledge and transform mindsets, as he did by creating a pop-up studio in Helsinki city hall.
Lesson 7 // Look for broader context
In his workshop Mapping service ecosystems, Cornelius Rachieru put forward that a design strategist’s role is to visualize the environment in which a business operates in order to better inform strategic decision making. In doing so, one must apply the right lenses by envisioning different points of view. He advocates avoiding the pitfall of user journeys that reflect a sole point of view and encouraged creation of ecosystem maps.
Ecosystem mapping is a collaborative process which helps companies visualize and understand the relationships between services, within the space (ecosystem) they operate in. For instance, the ecosystem of a bank is finance, for a tour operator it is travel.
Mapping requires six steps, in two phases. The first one is research and exploration: user and design research, drawing a rich picture of the system and identifying the primary actors. The second step is synthesis and exploration: grouping primary service clusters, expanding and diagramming, calibrating and applying lenses.
The session ended up with a visual representation of the primary actors, their jobs to be done and the overall service ecosystem. Applying lenses helps define the boundaries of the project, and the pathways, that can be translated into customer journey maps.
In Humans, Heat & Hygiene, Ellie Pereira focused on the role that design can play in complex systems, such as an overpopulated world, where temperatures rise and with increasing movements of people due to conflicts and natural disasters. This leads to a shift from artefact to system. A designer needs to think at a different scale, starting from object, interaction, location, and going to journey, structure, system and, finally, ending with the ecosystem. She detailed lessons learnt from working on a Red Cross project in Indonesia and concluded with a quote by Jamer Hunt: “We need to shift our scales of thinking between the individual, the local, the national and the global”, fostering us to become more reflective practitioners.
Lesson 8 // Details matter too…
Little things can have a big impact. This is the outcome of When UX takes a daytrip to Paris, by Natalie Moser and Surgical UX: Information design for visualisation systems in surgery, by Tim Caynes.
In her talk, Natalie shares how she and her team “humanized the experience” of taking the Eurostar by reflecting on how to create impact by making minor improvements. Micro copy, colours, labels and icons were used to improve understanding and recognition. It led to decreased anxiety and helped people be confident and achieve a more elevated experience.
Tim, on the other hand, explains how designing a small component for a real-time visualization system, used in endovascular surgery, was a real challenge. In brief, a tool for surgeons needing to know the status of the system, calculating and showing a 3D reconstitution of what is going on in the patient’s body. Despite the specificity of the context, Tim used a classic user-centric design process. He spent a significant amount of time, with many iterations, on one element that would tell the processing and give confidence to the surgeon without being distracted.
Read: Lessons from the EuroIA Conference 2018 in Dublin, Ireland // Part 1
Authors
Sylvie Daumal / Co-founder of WeDigital.Garden
Noelle Lewkowicz / Designer WeDigital.Garden
Arnaud Bartois / Designer WeDigital.Garden
Mathieu Bourel / Designer WeDigital.Garden
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About EuroIA
EuroIA is the place where the European information architecture and user experience design community meets and exchanges ideas, building a common knowledge. Four designers from WeDigitalGarden team had the great opportunity to attend as speakers, organizing a four-hour workshop.
