#interaction 19

We got our first snow of the season this evening. It was snowing as I was driving into Pittsburgh to teach my class, but stopped by the time I got there. As I finished my lecture, a couple of my students pointed out that it had started snowing. They seemed pretty excited. “This is our first snow,” they told me. I cracked a big grin. I love snow, but there’s nothing better than witnessing someone else experience it for the first time.

It took me back to my sophomore year of high school. My marching band had been invited to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. We spent much of the day before walking around Manhattan. I went to the top of one of the twin towers. I saw Rockefeller Center.

We had to be lined up at 5:00 in the morning. And wouldn’t you know, for the first time in something like twenty years, it snowed the morning of the parade. There was a good five inches on the ground. And it was cold. We had winter uniforms, but we weren’t wearing those. I remember standing on top of the grates where the warm air would occasionally blow up from the subway. We stood there watching our band director chat up Miss America. He claims he went on a date with her after the parade. I’m a drummer, so I didn’t wear gloves. By the time we started the parade, I couldn’t feel my fingers.

I also remember that there was a band there from Hawaii. Rather than fly in to New York, they had bussed all the way across the country, performing places as they went. More than one of their busses had broken down, and so only part of their band had made it. The rest were strewn out across the U.S. Those who were there were extremely excited. It was the first time they had seen snow. I’ll never forget that.

And then there was the year that IxDA’s Interaction conference was held in Seattle: 2019. I understand that Seattle doesn’t actually get much snow. On Wednesday, we started hearing about a big snowstorm that was expected to hit on Friday. That afternoon, I received a notification that might flight home Saturday morning had been canceled just due to the expectation of snow. That was a problem, because my church was going to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of our contemporary service, and there was no way I was going to miss that. My band was counting on me to be there. Alaska Air told me they could get me on a flight Tuesday. Screw that. I booked a flight out of Portland Saturday morning and then reserved a rental car from a place just around the corner from my hotel.

Sure enough, it started snowing Friday. Seattle doesn’t know how to deal with snow, so it just shut down. We were supposed to have our closing party in the Seattle Museum of Pop Culture, but they canceled on us. There we all were, wrapping up the Interaction Awards at the Fisher Pavilion with the snow coming down outside. Kiat Lim, our Regional Coordinator from Korea, was there with his wife taking pictures with a look of awe on his face. He explained that it was the first time they had seen snow. I so enjoyed watching them go outside and play in it.

I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, dragging my suitcase through maybe three inches of snow to stand at the door of the car rental waiting for them to open. The roads were a little dicey in places, but there was hardly anyone else on them, and I know how to drive in the snow. I made it to Portland, caught my flight, and was in church the next morning.

The first step in the Design Thinking process is Empathy. I’ve never cared for this name. It makes it seem as though there is one phase in which you practice empathy and after that, it’s no longer needed. We should have empathy for our users at all times. I prefer the term “discovery,” as that first activity is all about research, observation, and learning. Besides, empathy is only part of the equation.

Inclusion is better than empathy.

In her talk “Empathy Reifies Disability Stigmas,” presented at Interaction 19 in Seattle, Liz Jackson related a story about a time that IDEO contacted her to get her input on a tool they designed to help get disabled people hired. She asked them what disabled people they hired to help design it. They hadn’t hired any. It didn’t occur to them that they were perpetuating the very problem they were trying to solve. They were empathizing with disabled people, but they weren’t including them.

To round out our unit on ethics, we're watching talks from three different Interaction conferences: 18, 19, & 21. They cover disability stigmas, dark patterns, sustainability, and cognitive bias. Then we let Mike Monteiro send us off with a kick in the pants. Please, sir, may I have another?

Design Ethics and Systems Change by Leyla Acaroglu

Empathy Reifies Disability Stigmas by Liz Jackson

Design for Cognitive Bias by David Dylan Thomas

The third and final day of Interaction started with rumors flying about the impending snow storm. I neglected to mention this in my descriptions of days 1 and 2, but forecasts had been calling for massive amounts of snow, which the Seattle area doesn’t typically get. In fact, on Wednesday morning, I received notification that Alaska Airlines had canceled my flight home Saturday morning. I spent time between talks that day on the phone and various websites figuring out what to do. Alaska had booked me on a Monday morning flight, but my band was celebrating its 10th anniversary Sunday morning, so I really wanted to get home Saturday. Eventually, I figured out that I could rent a car Saturday morning and drive down to Portland to catch a flight home on United. Portland wasn’t expecting to get hit as hard.

So, as I said, rumors were flying Friday morning. Everyone else was dealing with similar issues, and rumors ranged from the last day of the conference being canceled to just the closing party being canceled. A lot of people decided to catch early flights so as not to get stuck in Seattle, so I was making hurried goodbyes to a number of friends, either in person or on Slack. As a Regional Coordinator, I heard the news before most people that the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP), the venue for the closing party, had cancelled on us. This was extremely disappointing, but we were also told that they were still trying to save the Interaction Awards ceremony. That they were able to do, and they shortened all of the afternoon talks so that we could get out early.

We kicked off with a keynote by John Maeda, Recovering and Reinvention. I first met John when my professor, Suguru Ishizaki, brought him from MIT to CMU to show us the computational designs he was creating. I’ve seen John speak twice recently, and this talk was much like the last, seeming to be a stream of consciousness, but in hindsight, more likely guided by a series of predetermined talking points. The thread that loosely tied this one together was a disjointed explanation of his journey from maker to talker.

People who make things tend to not talk a lot.

People who can’t make anything talk all the time.

As a maker, you had to become a talker.

Then the makers look at you and say, you’re not a maker; you’re a talker.

It was especially amusing when he got into maker makers, talker talkers, and maker talkers, but I’ll leave that for your own discovery.

Following John was another keynote, this one by Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun who regaled us with stories of work she’s done as Designer of Experiences at SETI, director of the International Space Orchestra, and the founder of the University of the Underground.

I then attended the AI & Ethics track, during which Brielle Nickoloff discussed such questions as:

Should Alexa demand respect?

Should Alexa encourage politeness?

Does Alexa deserve respect?

And Elizabeth Churchill framed AI design as positive, ethical ensorcellment, with discussion of bias, dark patterns, and chaos engineering.

Following lunch, there was a single track series of talks to wrap up the conference. I find Maria Giudice to be very inspirational, so it was good to see her speak in person, but for my money, Chris Avore’s talk was the one I needed to hear. His advice on evolving design leadership, expanding design practice, and elevating design maturity is something I’ll be referring back to as I try to do just that within Boeing.

I was rooting for Jack Morgan, as he was representing Duolingo, a great success story from Pittsburgh. He had some interesting stories in his talk, and it looks like the documentary film, Something Like Home, could be good, but the talk mostly came across as an insincere marketing pitch.

The closing keynote was by Ayse Birsel who has created a book and coursework, Design the Life You Love, that teaches designers and non-designers how to create a meaningful life through a design process. It’s based on five principles: optimism, empathy, holistic thinking, collaboration, and open mind.

Immediately after Ayse finished, we boarded busses to the Fisher Pavilion for the Interaction Awards Ceremony. It was snowing pretty heavily by this time. People from parts of the world that don’t tend to get snow were throwing snowballs at each other and having a great time.

The ceremony was somewhat disappointing. Many of the winners weren’t present, which is understandable, but it just made the whole thing rather anti-climactic. The food for the closing party was donated to a homeless shelter, and that’s a wonderful thing, but the appetizers at the awards show were lacking. The positive outcome was that a group of us left with plans for dinner and our own, unofficial closing party.

We had a bit of a wait, but Rocco’s Specialty Bar & Pizzeria was worth it. Three Little Piggies and the Banh Mi were both fantastic. Then we stayed out way too late at Branchwater. The snow was collecting on the roads—there may have been two inches as I returned to the hotel. I woke up the next morning to a couple more.

I was putting off completing my review of Interaction 19 until all of the videos were released, but apparently there’s an issue with one that I was planning on sharing here, as it still isn’t available. As it has now been over two months since the conference, I figured I’d better wrap this up.

Thursday’s theme was Millions of Experiments, and it kicked off strong with a keynote by Shubham Banerjee. It was inspiring to hear him tell the story of how he, as a twelve-year-old, built a Braille printer using Lego Mindstorms and became the youngest founder ever to receive VC funding.

The rest of the day was a mixed bag. I was excited for the New Mediums, New Realities track in the Cinerama Theater, as I’m currently starting to work on some XR projects, and the first talk, Mixed Reality Design Patterns by Heather Raikes and Kian Chai Ng from Microsoft Mixed Reality Studios had a few interesting tidbits. I was especially intrigued by their physical prototyping methods. For example, they used coffee cups and popsicle sticks as stands for printed or sketched UI elements that were then placed around a room. That said, I found their work underwhelming. They showed an example of an AR file browser that just laid folders out in a 3-D grid without providing any additional information or value afforded by the spatial presentation. The folders would have been more readily viewed and accessed in a simple menu.

Michael Scherotter, also at Microsoft, showed off a nifty tool for sketching 360° environments as a quick way to prototype for VR.

After lunch, I attended the AI in the Wild track. I didn’t find much in these talks to be of particular use to me, but I did appreciated Vilma Sirainen presenting a solid case study in which her team at Zalando prototyped, tested, and implemented algorithms that understand fashion and outfits, discern a customer’s taste, and assist (rather than replace) a fashion consultant, resulting in an 18% increase in revenue.

The second afternoon track was On the Edge, which included talks about designing for the canabis industry and designing augmentations for our bodies that provide us with new senses.

Marty Neumeier brought the day’s closing keynote, Agile Strategy: Designing in the 21st Century. Related to his most recent book, Scramble, Marty explained that design “plays in the gap between what is and what could be.” He pointed to swarming as the key to Agile Strategy, allowing design, brainstorming, research, strategy, testing, and goal setting to all happen at the same time, rather than in phases.

The conference started off strong with an opening keynote by Bill Buxton. Playing off the conferences theme, Design in the Wild, Bill’s talk was titled Wild Design for Living Wild. Using a canoe he constructed as a metaphor, he discussed designing things for the context in which they exist. The canoe is of its place. As he paddled it through Saskatchewan, its repair kit was all around. Rather than designing for ubiquity, Bill encouraged us to design for ubiety: condition in respect of place or location. He painted a picture in which our devices and environments are smart enough to understand transitions between places, for example, moving a phone conversation from the audio system in your car, to the phone in your pocket, and then to the speaker in your kitchen seamlessly.

Bill was immediately followed by Liz Jackson who whacked us upside the head with her cane (figuratively speaking) giving us a woke perspective on designing for disabilities. In fact, that phrase is the problem. Too many of us are designing for disabilities instead of designing with people with disabilities. IDEO had called her and told her that they had designed a technology to help disabled people get hired. So Liz asked them, what disabled people did you hire to help design this thing to help get disabled people hired? It hadn’t occurred to them that they were perpetuating the problem they had intended to fix. 

Liz explained pathological altruism—when your well-meaning efforts worsen the very situation you are trying to improve. She opened my eyes to the way disability is treated in media. Looking at the reactions people have to commercials featuring people with disabilities, her organization, Critical Axis, determined that the more authentically disabled people speak, the less they are believed. This was, for me, the most powerful talk of the conference. I wish I had the opportunity to get her opinions on Microsoft’s recent advertising for their Xbox Adaptive Controller.

After a short break, we had a single track of talks on ethics, including an interesting view on the Abuse and Disinformation at Twitter: An Inside Story from former employee Jon Bell, and What We Really Mean When We Say “Ethics” by Molly Steenson, who I’ve come to know since she started teaching at CMU a few years ago.

The limitations of the Amazon Meeting Center and the record attendance made lunch a bit of a hassle. Food stations were set up in a hallway that acted as a main thoroughfare, leading to traffic jams and overcrowding. And while I do appreciate the organizers’ desire to accommodate everyone’s dietary needs, lunch also exhibited what would be a theme throughout the rest of the week: a complete absence of red meat.

After lunch, I chose to attend the track titled Old Frontiers Are the New Frontiers, mainly because I always find Jon Kolko’s talks illuminating. He didn’t disappoint, showing us the power of stories to shape and sell a strategy. He drew on compelling examples from his own research into social issues.

The day wrapped with a closing keynote by Don Norman. While I am, of course, very familiar with Don’s writing, this was the first opportunity I’ve had to see him speak in person. His message was that designers shouldn’t be solving problems. Rather, we should facilitate local people solving their own problems.

After the conference wrapped up, I joined a dear friend for her birthday celebration dinner at Relish Burger Bistro where I made up for the lack of meat at lunch. Thus sated, we proceeded to the private karaoke room that had been rented out and sang until well past midnight.

I started Tuesday morning with a lovely Greek Scramble at Lola. While the conference workshops were going on, the Regional Coordinators met to plan our ten minutes on stage. We would have an opportunity to show attendees what IxDA local groups are all about. There are approximately 255 local groups worldwide learning, doing, networking, partying, and connecting.

After our workshop, a few of us decided to check out the Space Needle before the opening party. We arrived at sunset. What a view!

The opening party was held in the Seattle Art Museum, a spectacular space. We weren’t crowded, there was plenty of food, and the music wasn’t so loud as to deter conversation.

I didn’t even make it to the desert table, as I was constantly running into people I wanted to talk to. It was an evening full of engaging conversations. And of course, we got our Interaction Lifer photo. This is everyone who has attended all twelve conferences (accept for Greg Petroff, who arrived later).

Monday morning brought a thin blanket of snow and chilling winds to harass us as we walked over to the School of Visual Concepts to set up for our full-day workshop for IxDA local leaders (and those aspiring to be). We began with a presentation from our sponsor, InVision, about their newly released Design Maturity Model, and an announcement from Adobe about this year’s World Interaction Design Day. Following this, the regional coordinators presented an abbreviated version of the report we gave to the board.

Then we broke out into two activities. New and aspiring local leaders were presented with an IxDA Local Group Canvas. They worked through outlining their intent, mission, and vision, listing communication channels, resources, partners, and team members.

The larger activity was a continuation of the workshop I led at MWUX. We split into groups looking at maturity levels in six areas: programming, outreach, leadership, data collection, communication, and finances. Each group first broke down their area into subcategories and then established maturity levels across those subcategories. Finally, they listed the challenges of moving from one maturity level to the next, the benefits of doing so, and any dependencies on other categories.

At the end of the day, each group presented their work. We made a lot of progress towards a usable maturity model. We’ll continue working to synthesize the information and produce tools for collecting, visualizing, and publishing maturity data in support of mentoring and improving local groups.

Of course, after a long day, drinks were in order, so we headed over to TeKu Tavern before grabbing dinner at Serious Pie.