#interaction 14

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I thought the badges were fairly well designed this year. The best feature was that the front and back were identical. There were no problems with them flipping around, though the name could have been larger. The badge contained tabbed cards that could pivot out to reveal the schedule. These were also mirrored front and back. To keep the badges to a reasonable size, sessions were only listed by presenter name, not title, which made them a little less useful. Name order corresponded to the room, though that wasn’t indicated. Each morning, as we entered, we were presented with booklets containing full details on all sessions and activities for the day. Before the opening keynote, I would go through the booklet and underline the presenters on my badge that I wanted to see.

“What would you like to ask a pair of shoes?”

So, she's been coming up with visual languages to help discuss these issues. Information overload is one of her focuses, currently she has been working on projects redesigning the product label, putting the whole story of a product on a package in a concise and visually pleasing manner. It reminded me of NPR's Planet Money Makes a T-shirt. A 5-chapter interactive story that starts with the cotton and goes all the way to the store, except their story takes 5 videos, all of varying lengths from 1 to 7 minutes long, plus a written story for each chapter. It's a lot of information which they break down into a beautiful story, but not something you could replicate with every product on the store shelves. Instead, Arlene distills this information down into iconography and color, a whole story on the side of cereal box. Her goal is to connect "the everyday" to the "big picture". 

After working on my consciousness I attended a presentation by Svenja Jeune, an interactive artist with a unique point of view about how we treat our objects. To me, it felt like the perfect follow up. As opposed to a talk that takes a pragmatic approach to experience design, this was about feelings and empathy towards our surroundings, much like the talk before was about empathy to oneself and others. Her question was: What is the future of our objects? For most, the future is a landfill. But instead of making the statement in an upsetting way, she took a very curious approach to the problem. Giving her objects agency and a voice for communication, giving them personality and emotions. In this way, she is able to design communicative surfaces that better bridge the gap between interface/technology/human. I know for a lot of attendees her talk probably was a little too weird for them, or maybe it didn't talk about wireframes enough (or at all), but that might be why I gravitated to it so strongly. I'll take the weird over the expected any day. 

Last week I was in Amsterdam for the Interaction 14 conference. This is a reflection I wrote on the final day of the conference. See my previous conference-related posts on selling ideas and body and design. As Interaction 14 comes to a close, my brain is filled with lots of interesting ideas and I’m thinking about the themes that spoke to me the most over the course of the last 3 days. Here’s a recap of some of my major takeaways. Theme #1: Languages of interaction Verbal  As a lover of words, I appreciated Klaus Krippendorf’s deep dive into the theory of language and how it relates to the design practice. He walked through several different philosophies of language, ultimately arguing that dialog is at the core of interaction. It’s worthwhile to understand the implications of this truth. According to Krippendorf, language doesn’t only describe, but also creates realities in conversations and actions. The meaning of the language we use is therefore not fixed, but changes in the process of our conversations. In addition, language constructs social-relational realities that change over time. I liked his point that design should be about accepting dialog over fixed principles. Visual Scott McCloud (of Understanding Comics fame) delivered a really engaging presentation on the principles of visual language. He provided many rich insights, lots of which were reminders of past thinkings and readings I’ve done, and some of which I enjoyed hearing for the first time. One of my favorite moments of his talk was when he described visual communication as a 2-way street – the artist gives the audience some stimuli, and the audience meets her halfway. I also appreciated McCloud’s point that as designers, we shouldn’t think of our medium as pixels or pencil and paper. Rather, our medium is the understanding of our users, and our craft is communicating concepts in the simplest possible ways. I’ve always been fascinated by communication and how visuals and words come together to create meaning, and all of these ideas resonated deeply with the way I think about design.  Alternative Is there a body language of design? Irene Au gave a beautiful talk about the connections between the mind and body, the divergences between analytic and empathetic thinking, and how designers might employ yoga and mediation practices to hone both of these skills. For more on this, check out my post on body and design. Bernard Lahousse also gave a fascinating presentation on food as interaction. He explored how taste is informed by the relationships and interactions between different ingredients in a dish, and how all of our senses play a role in the way we experience food. Theme #2: Memory and experience  How does an experience differ from an experience remembered? Lucino Santos presented a brief body of research on this topic, with a few highlights that are relevant to consider in the design process. First, research shows that when people think back on an experience, 2 distinct impressions typically have the strongest influence on their perception of the experience – the peak point of intensity and the tail end. This made me think about the importance of designing for emotion. How might each moment in an experience evoke something inside someone? Which touchpoints will be peaks of intense emotion?  What kind of lasting impression might someone take with them at the tail end of an experience? These questions are significant not only because they consider how someone might remember an experience we design, but also because that memory will directly impact how the person behaves in the future. Santos also talked about the process of memory retrieval. It’s a reconstructive process – as we remember an experience, we tell ourselves a story about it based on a blur of lasting impressions, some inevitable distortions, and information that just happens to be in our brain at the time of recall. This resonates with my belief that each interaction we design, big or small, has an opportunity to impact people's lasting perceptions in different ways.  In a talk called “Choice... Gateway to Engagement,” Brad Nunnally discussed the attention economy and Herbert Simon’s concept of “return on attention.” In an information-overloaded world, this term truly resonates with me. In a way, it reframes the responsibility of designers. We’re not only tasked with getting people’s attention, but more importantly, we need to made sure that the attention we’re commanding leads to a meaningful use of time. I previously reflected on respecting people’s time in my Design with Manners post.

This week, I’m in Amsterdam for the Interaction 14 conference. This is a reflection on a talk I saw today called “Body Languages of Interaction Design.”  Irene Au  gave a beautiful talk today about the connections between the mind and body,  the divergences between analytic and empathetic thinking, and how we might employ yoga and mediation practices to hone both of these skills. To summarize her points: 1. Our bodies affect our mental and emotional states. For example, research has shown that act of simply smiling can lift a person’s mood, and upright posture lead to increased confidence and risk-taking. 2. Analytical thinking and empathy are mutually exclusive. Apparently, a Case Western study revealed a neurological divide between the two modes of thought, which means when we practice one side, it’s often to the detriment of the other.    3. To hone both our analytic and empathetic sides, we can channel yoga and meditation. In different parts of the design process, we may need to put on our analytic or empathetic hats. Want to hunker down and focus, or prime yourself for a design critique? Try focused-attention meditation or retractive yoga poses like forward fold. Need to generate ideas or collaborate with people? Step away from the computer – that hunched-over pose is a reflection of our natural defensive tendencies. Try a heart-opening pose to open yourself to new people and ideas, or open-monitoring mediation to let your imagination wander and withhold judgement. ••• Au’s talk made me reflect on the role of yoga in my own life. As a long-term runner, it took me a while to develop the patience and appreciation for the practice that I have today. Now I feel out of sorts if I miss a class. I hadn't before thought critically about what turned me around on yoga or why it brings me joy; in a lot of ways, it’s just a feeling.  In a similar vein, I’ve been told from various different sources that I look especially happy when I’m running. Apparently, I smile a lot as I go – something that happens so unconsciously that I’m caught off guard every time people tell me this. After all, I mostly just think when I run. I’m realizing that there’s a synergy between my body and my work that I haven’t quite explored in depth. A lot of people with busy schedules say they don’t have time for exercise. My busiest times are often when I go out of my way to exercise more. I’ve always said it’s my therapy, my way to destress. But there’s another benefit to which I haven't given much thought: During this “me time,” I often enter a sort of timeless meditative and reflective state. In fact, a lot of my best insights come when I’m running or doing yoga.   Of course, these activity-thinking cycles aren’t always centered around work. But there’s a kind of zen about the balance of body and work, the power of using the body to enhance and connect with work in a deeper way. In a way that makes work transcend work, and become something bigger. 

This week, I’m in Amsterdam for the Interaction 14 conference. This is a reflection on a talk I saw yesterday called “Pitching Ideas." In his talk, Jeroen van Geel noted: “Creating a good idea is 10% about the idea and 90% about the people.” To a designer's romantic, creative soul, the thought of “selling” anything – especially an idea – is disconcerting. But it’s a reality that we all have to grapple with.  As an introvert, I often feel inhibited about putting my ideas out there. I’ve learned to build confidence over time, to be more playful and collaborative with creative risk-taking, and that's a central tenant of my Entrepreneurial Design class this semester. It’s about getting over the fear of putting yourself out there. Purposefully, the instructors put no emphasis on the actual thing you decide to pitch to the world. You simply have to produce something and sell it.  What happens when you’ve gotten past that fear? How do you get people to receive your idea positively? In his talk, Van Geel focused on the soft skills of communication, citing two important qualities that convince: likability and trustworthiness. To demonstrate these, he showed a video of President John F. Kennedy delivering a speech and pointed out how people-focused he was. JFK began his speech by calling out his stakeholders by name to show respect and thank them for being there. He proceeded to emphasize their co-ownership in his plans by framing everything around “we” rather than “I.” Finally, he built trust by showing his audience that he understood their values, process, history and strategy. I wonder how Sneha and I might apply some of these lessons to our entrepreneurial project. What story will we tell our audience? How might we show them respect and make them feel like co-owners in our design process? How might we make them feel invested?