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Learnings from the interaction21 conference
Never did a conference have a more prophetic theme than interaction21 this year. “Design in Perilous Times” came on the heels of interaction20’s “A New Dawn,” which signifies a turning point in the way the design community perceives itself and how it will continue to grow going forward.
What is interaction21?
interaction21 is an annual global design conference run by the Interaction Design Association (IXDA) that showcases the latest trends and future thinking in interaction design (known also under the broader name of UX design). Its members are a tight-knit community of professionals who share resources and help one another to grow. interaction is special because it is the only design conference where, when the speakers step off stage, they are an accessible and friendly part of the community rather than simply “sages on a stage.”
When we work as the solo designer in a team or an organization, we can feel cut off from the debate and idea exchange that excites our brains and inspires our work. interaction is a fire starter and an opportunity to meet and share ideas with people who you may not otherwise meet in your career. (I am biased: I spoke at interaction16, and since then have been lucky enough to attend almost every year since.)
In this post, I’ll be showcasing four interesting and inspiring talks that I attended over the three-day conference. Keep in mind these were talks from the ones I was able to attend and sketchnote which was only a fraction of the conference — if you have other ones you’d like to share, please comment below.
Mapping Hate: Erin Malone
In her work with the Anti-Defamation League, Erin Malone presents her exhaustive research into the complex web of how hate speech and begins and is influenced by various methods and actors. In it, she talks about how hate is monetized through merchandise and subscriptions that enables people with a platform built on hate to continue fomenting hate as a business rather than a personal opinion.
She also speaks of intervention points, where educational institutions, family, and community members can intervene to help prevent a person from being radicalized. Her work is also an excellent case study into how to research and map complex, messy systems, as radicalization is not a linear path.
The big learning from her talk is that something as complex as “hate online” cannot be solved by a singular point alone—and we as designers can make a difference by attempting to understand and map the systems in which a problem is occurring, not just propose solutions on how to solve the problem itself. Understanding when to intervene is just as important as how to intervene.
Designing for Trust in the Post-Truth Era: Jonathan H Brown
As a natural pair to Erin Malone’s talk, Jonathan H Brown talks broadly of the metaphysical term for the “collective knowledge of humanity” called the noosphere coined by French philosopher De Chardin. His argument is that simply de-platforming hate speech apps like Parler only ensures that they re-establish themselves in other, harder-to-monitor spaces (Parler has since come back online, hosted by a company called SkySilk).
So how do we monitor our collective knowledge without de-platforming? He suggests that we use a rubric of testing the character of both the poster and the message by asking ourselves the following,
- “Is this person really who they say they are?”
- “What is the intent of this message?”
- “What is this person’s previous track record?”
- “Is this topic in their area of expertise?”
By asking ourselves these four critical questions we can understand whether a post is legitimate, fear-mongering or simply coming from an uninformed perspective. At the end of his talk, he presents a new experimental decentralized monitoring platform he’s working on called Noosphere. I’m looking forward to seeing where this experimental platform goes.
How Design Communities Can Address Social Inequities, Racism and Homophobia: Mitzi Okou, Max Masure, Rebecca Brooker, Pablo Stanley, and Brenda Laurel
Five heavyweights in design, each who have cultivated and are supported diverse communities, talk about the challenges facing designers as a community. There were so many quotable moments in this talk that I can’t cover them in a short summary alone, and I will post the recording when it becomes available on Vimeo. Particularly Mitzi Okou’s closing comment struck a chord:
“As designers, we are taught to critique, but we label black designers as ‘defensive’ if we point out gaslighting [in our community and in our designs].
White designers have the privilege to design anything [without worrying about how it will affect them and their communities]. I want for us to do the same. But black designers — we have to design for survival, because otherwise we are designing for our death.”
If that quote made you feel as uncomfortable as it did me, good. The design community doesn’t often turn the spotlight on themselves as perpetrators of social inequity, racism and homophobia as we see ourselves as open-minded, empathetic and compassionate people who practice “human-centered design.”
But just because it makes us uncomfortable doesn’t make it any less true, nor does it make us bad people to address it openly, take accountability and work to improve it. This talk was a refreshing “calling in” of the design community to take responsibility for what they can change and change it.
Utopia for Designers: Nina Krishnan
Nina’s main argument is that common utopian thinking (i.e. “Don’t think about the present! Design for the future!”) is unrealistic, static and is working towards a perfection that is unachievable. It is also done by designers who have the security of not worrying about the present (as Mitzi points out) and excludes historically marginalized communities.
Instead, she presents us with a compelling alternative framework from feminist activism—critiquing the existing system, imagining a brighter, realistic future together with impacted communities, and putting those futures together with continuous action. This, she says, is the brighter way forward—from “consultant” to “co-creator” and from “designing towards a utopian future” to “designing towards an equitable future.” She references Antionette D. Carroll’s talk on Understanding Identity, Power, and Equity in Design Leadership and Rutger Bregman’s book Utopia for Realists which I recommend to those interested in digging in deeper into this topic.
Personal impressions
As a young designer, I studied the “greats” of design—Charles Eames, Walter Gropius, Dieter Rams—who were white, male-identified individuals. Context and framing influences all our design decisions and I’ve noticed that commonly “great design” is coded language for “design that white men do.” They are talented individuals, but it is also true they owe societal and actual institutions that validated their “greatness” in the design field.
For those of us who have been in design for a while, we, actively or inadvertently, have contributed to this system. Even in a relatively young field like interaction design, we still uphold traditional ways of critiquing design based on its usefulness to a singular person with little regard to how our work contributes to driving income inequality or reliance on privatized systems. It is my hope that we can, with the help of our fellow BIPOC, queer, neurodivergent and designers with disabilities, tear down old constructs, burn them, and like the phoenix, rise anew. It’s what we as designers do best, right? Make ideas, tear them up and craft them anew.
To do that, we will have to feel discomfort. We will have to grapple with ideas and values that we ourselves may not value, and be at peace with not always being the subject matter expert. I felt some of this energy at this interaction21, especially during Day 3, but I invite the IXDA organizers to push more to call out breakdowns in our community, call in our community members to grow and learn from one another, and empower diverse designers and leaders so we can reshape the face of what “great” design looks like.
What’s next?
A few call to actions came up in the conference:
- Value systemic thinking and seek out your own blind spots. Read Donnella Meadows, Victor Papanek, and Safiya Noble to broaden your horizons and consider how technology contributes to the pre-existing destruction of our environmental and social systems. If you want to get more involved, there’s an active conversation happening on the IXDA Slack in the #systems-thinking channel.
- Understand and practice inclusive design. Specifically — design that is not contributing to destructive cycles of social oppression. One of the speakers, Ariba Jahan put together an excellent list of resources for learning about inclusive design.
- Join a community.
In addition to the IXDA Slack, there are places where designers of traditionally underrepresented groups can find some solidarity:
Where are the black designers? is a community for black designers for community, jobs and mentorship.
Latinx Who Design is a group for Latinx designers and creative leaders.
Queer Design Club is a design community for queer-identified folx. - Support your community. Via mentoring (I suggest Pair Up), portfolio reviews, buying software licenses for designers who can’t afford it. Creative work is still a pay-to-play game, and oftentimes designers that can afford their own computer, software, and ability to take time off to go school/bootcamp are the ones who can successfully get into this industry. Give back and help the community grow.
If you know of any good resources on any of the above, please comment or reach out to me on Twitter. I want to share more resources, especially those created by underrepresented groups.
Thank you to everyone who organized, spoke and participated in this event. If I met you at the conference, it was wonderful to meet you—if I haven’t met you yet, I hope to see you at the next one.
I will post the respective video links to these talks once they become available on Vimeo.
