Interaction 11 - Experience Design Strategy

I recently attended the Interaction 11 Conference organized by the IxDA. This is a great event. Over 600 people came together to share their insights and knowledge about how to design better experiences for people.

There are some great reviews of the event posted on the IxDA site. Videos of the keynote speakers are also available.

I thought that I would provide a condensed guide to some of highlights. Later posts will follow up in more detail on some of these ideas.

We have the ability to deliver great things; things of beauty that are engaging and effective.

We design to meet the needs of people. What people need or want can vary. Some want very simple experiences while others need more complexity. Josh Clark discussed designing weather information. Some might simply want an icon of an umbrella if it is going to rain that day. Others want to know why the weather is the way it is in great detail.

People have different needs but they also have different abilities. Jimmy Chandler helped us understand some of the ways that we can design for a range of abilities in Accessibility is Not a Checklist.

People have different goals. Many might believe our job is to encourage people to consume. Peter Knock encouraged us to think of how to help people create.

Interaction Design continues to grow as a discipline. But, many seem to forget our ancestry and the lessons that have been learned by those who came before. Bill Verplank and Richard Buchanan provided some context for where the field has been and where it might go.

Carl Alviani encouraged us to better articulate what we do and the value we bring to organizations; to design our message with the audience in mind. We work with people from many disciplines. We should be finding common ground and collaborating better with others. For example, we share the goal of understanding people’s needs with Marketing and should work together toward meeting those needs.

Finally, Bruce Sterling said we should embrace the fact that we bring change but realize that it won’t last forever. Putting it bluntly, “You will become obsolete faster than your gray haired predecessors.”

My personal take on the conference is a mixed review. I was very excited to attend and I did find it to be a valuable experience. I met many great people and gained some new insight into my profession. Yet, there were some changes, too. Changes in direction that may not be helpful.

For some background, I have attended many CHI and UPA conferences. I attended Interaction 08, the first year this conference was held. Interaction provides a level of energy that other conferences do not. It has a fun vibe and many interesting people attend. Most of the presentations were very well done. Some were very inspirational.

A few, could have benefited from a bit more application of Interaction Design Practices; to be more grounded in the needs of people and business; to actually test their designs or ideas to ensure they work. People sometimes complain that the CHI conference requires too much rigor in the presentations they accept; that testing must be done before a paper can be accepted. Perhaps there is a middle ground. For Interaction Design to be successful, we must also do testing with people to ensure our products work effectively. Otherwise, we are just presenting what ‘we think will work’; playing in the field of opinions. We want to break new ground, to be innovative, but we must deliver differentiated value. We have a long tradition as a professional practice – we know our unique value to organizations and just need to deliver it.

Did you attend Interaction 11? Maybe you had the chance to go to a different interaction design conference. What did you think? Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.