By Kem-laurin Kramer, Stephen O'Connell, and Ian Hooper
Interaction
13: Photo: Richard Cerezo
1100
designers entered the belly of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where we
collided to help “define our role as guides through social interactions, digital,
and beyond.” The Interaction conference, held in our home city of Toronto (January 28-31), was also a celebration of 10 years of IxDA with OCAD University as the event sponsor.
Monday
began with a keynote by Ravi Sawhney, Our power to empower: The satisfaction
of designing for social impact, which reached into a cornucopia of
historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and John Lennon. The talk focused on
drawing parallels between different eras of design. Sawhney posited that if we could
look outside our own bubbles to the world at large, we’d recognize that there
are many others who have had great influences on society, even if they weren’t
designers explicitly. We too can be just as influential as those great minds by
utilizing our power to change the world through design. Creating this social
impact is one piece of a far greater whole that “flows through our fingertips
as we conceive and create not only new user experiences, but in fact new,
highly empowered users… everywhere”.
Mr.
Sawhey’s keynote highlighted a day that segued into many other inspiring
presentations including Dan Saffer’s MicroInteractions: Designing with
Details. Saffer’s presentation asserts that the difference between a “good”
product and a “great” one is in its details. He termed these
“microinteractions”; the small moments inside and around features, which are
typically not on any feature list and often ignored. All these little moments
can change a product from one that is tolerated to one that’s beloved. This talk
provided a new perspective on designing digital products as a series of
microinteractions that are essential to bringing personality and delight to our
experiences with applications and devices. After leaving this talk, I could not
help but think it was fundamental user experience knowledge that we had
collectively forgotten, polished up with a new name. All in all a great
presentation!
Later
that day a number of mini presentations (10 minutes) were inserted before
lunch. Of note was Health on the Go: Designing Electronic Health Records for
Mobile. This is a growing hot topic today, and one with an undoubtedly long
way to go as issues of privacy and security make it very complicated.
***
Tuesday
arrived with cold rain and slushy snow – not exactly how we want our city
remembered. However, all this was forgotten when Jer Thorp took the stage to
present Data and the Human Experience. In his talk he focused
specifically on the juncture where these two aspects meet. He also detailed a
number of projects involving diverse data sets, including the 770,000 words in
the Shakespeare Folio, astronomical measurements from NASA, text from nightly
news broadcasts, and real-time air traffic reports. Jer discussed how, by
framing data in a human context, we can use it more effectively, and ultimately
foster better practices for data-focused design. For the mathematically
inclined designers in the room, it was a crowning moment. Never had data looked
so sexy; the presentation was meticulous both in process and aesthetics. Ben Shneiderman would have wept tears of joy.
Later
that day CNN UX Designer, Judith
Siegel, took the stage to present CNN
and the UX Challenge of Presenting Long-Form Stories. This was another of
my favourite presentations and a great juxtaposition to Jer Thorpe’s data
presentation. “Textual information” was the focus here, and Siegel addressed
some of the design challenges with “long form journalism” in an age where
textual consumption is faced with short spans of attention.
Just
when we thought the day could not get any better, Sara Cantor Aye graced the
stage in a rather engaging presentation, Designing
Everything but the Food, which first had me wondering how it made the
program. However, although this presentation was more architectural in nature,
it underscored some of the key principles in user-centric design. By using
design methods, the team at Greater Good Studio helped improve a middle school
cafeteria through ethnographic research to inform industrial design. Through a
series of changes to how the food was presented and distributed, they managed
to dramatically improve how the kids ate their food. That in turn led to less
food waste. It was an inspiring and interesting talk. Social Change? We think
so!
1100
designers entered the belly of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where we
collided to help “define our role as guides through social interactions, digital,
and beyond.” The 6th annual Interaction
conference, held in our home city of Toronto (January 28-31), was also a
celebration of 10 years of IxDA with OCAD University as the event sponsor.
Monday
began with a keynote by Ravi Sawhney, Our power to empower: The satisfaction
of designing for social impact, which reached into a cornucopia of
historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and John Lennon. The talk focused on
drawing parallels between different eras of design. Sawhney posited that if we could
look outside our own bubbles to the world at large, we’d recognize that there
are many others who have had great influences on society, even if they weren’t
designers explicitly. We too can be just as influential as those great minds by
utilizing our power to change the world through design. Creating this social
impact is one piece of a far greater whole that “flows through our fingertips
as we conceive and create not only new user experiences, but in fact new,
highly empowered users… everywhere”.
Mr.
Sawhey’s keynote highlighted a day that segued into many other inspiring
presentations including Dan Saffer’s MicroInteractions: Designing with
Details. Saffer’s presentation asserts that the difference between a “good”
product and a “great” one is in its details. He termed these
“microinteractions”; the small moments inside and around features, which are
typically not on any feature list and often ignored. All these little moments
can change a product from one that is tolerated to one that’s beloved. This talk
provided a new perspective on designing digital products as a series of
microinteractions that are essential to bringing personality and delight to our
experiences with applications and devices. After leaving this talk, I could not
help but think it was fundamental user experience knowledge that we had
collectively forgotten, polished up with a new name. All in all a great
presentation!
Later
that day a number of mini presentations (10 minutes) were inserted before
lunch. Of note was Health on the Go: Designing Electronic Health Records for
Mobile. This is a growing hot topic today, and one with an undoubtedly long
way to go as issues of privacy and security make it very complicated.
***
1100
designers entered the belly of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, where we
collided to help “define our role as guides through social interactions, digital,
and beyond.” The 6th annual Interaction
conference, held in our home city of Toronto (January 28-31), was also a
celebration of 10 years of IxDA with OCAD University as the event sponsor.
Monday
began with a keynote by Ravi Sawhney, Our power to empower: The satisfaction
of designing for social impact, which reached into a cornucopia of
historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and John Lennon. The talk focused on
drawing parallels between different eras of design. Sawhney posited that if we could
look outside our own bubbles to the world at large, we’d recognize that there
are many others who have had great influences on society, even if they weren’t
designers explicitly. We too can be just as influential as those great minds by
utilizing our power to change the world through design. Creating this social
impact is one piece of a far greater whole that “flows through our fingertips
as we conceive and create not only new user experiences, but in fact new,
highly empowered users… everywhere”.
Mr.
Sawhey’s keynote highlighted a day that segued into many other inspiring
presentations including Dan Saffer’s MicroInteractions: Designing with
Details. Saffer’s presentation asserts that the difference between a “good”
product and a “great” one is in its details. He termed these
“microinteractions”; the small moments inside and around features, which are
typically not on any feature list and often ignored. All these little moments
can change a product from one that is tolerated to one that’s beloved. This talk
provided a new perspective on designing digital products as a series of
microinteractions that are essential to bringing personality and delight to our
experiences with applications and devices. After leaving this talk, I could not
help but think it was fundamental user experience knowledge that we had
collectively forgotten, polished up with a new name. All in all a great
presentation!
Later
that day a number of mini presentations (10 minutes) were inserted before
lunch. Of note was Health on the Go: Designing Electronic Health Records for
Mobile. This is a growing hot topic today, and one with an undoubtedly long
way to go as issues of privacy and security make it very complicated.
***
Tuesday
arrived with cold rain and slushy snow – not exactly how we want our city
remembered. However, all this was forgotten when Jer Thorp took the stage to
present Data and the Human Experience. In his talk he focused
specifically on the juncture where these two aspects meet. He also detailed a
number of projects involving diverse data sets, including the 770,000 words in
the Shakespeare Folio, astronomical measurements from NASA, text from nightly
news broadcasts, and real-time air traffic reports. Jer discussed how, by
framing data in a human context, we can use it more effectively, and ultimately
foster better practices for data-focused design. For the mathematically
inclined designers in the room, it was a crowning moment. Never had data looked
so sexy; the presentation was meticulous both in process and aesthetics. Ben Shneiderman would have wept tears of joy.
Later
that day CNN UX Designer, Judith
Siegel, took the stage to present CNN
and the UX Challenge of Presenting Long-Form Stories. This was another of
my favourite presentations and a great juxtaposition to Jer Thorpe’s data
presentation. “Textual information” was the focus here, and Siegel addressed
some of the design challenges with “long form journalism” in an age where
textual consumption is faced with short spans of attention.
Just
when we thought the day could not get any better, Sara Cantor Aye graced the
stage in a rather engaging presentation, Designing
Everything but the Food, which first had me wondering how it made the
program. However, although this presentation was more architectural in nature,
it underscored some of the key principles in user-centric design. By using
design methods, the team at Greater Good Studio helped improve a middle school
cafeteria through ethnographic research to inform industrial design. Through a
series of changes to how the food was presented and distributed, they managed
to dramatically improve how the kids ate their food. That in turn led to less
food waste. It was an inspiring and interesting talk. Social Change? We think
so!
Tuesday
arrived with cold rain and slushy snow – not exactly how we want our city
remembered. However, all this was forgotten when Jer Thorp took the stage to
present Data and the Human Experience. In his talk he focused
specifically on the juncture where these two aspects meet. He also detailed a
number of projects involving diverse data sets, including the 770,000 words in
the Shakespeare Folio, astronomical measurements from NASA, text from nightly
news broadcasts, and real-time air traffic reports. Jer discussed how, by
framing data in a human context, we can use it more effectively, and ultimately
foster better practices for data-focused design. For the mathematically
inclined designers in the room, it was a crowning moment. Never had data looked
so sexy; the presentation was meticulous both in process and aesthetics. Ben Shneiderman would have wept tears of joy.
Later
that day CNN UX Designer, Judith
Siegel, took the stage to present CNN
and the UX Challenge of Presenting Long-Form Stories. This was another of
my favourite presentations and a great juxtaposition to Jer Thorpe’s data
presentation. “Textual information” was the focus here, and Siegel addressed
some of the design challenges with “long form journalism” in an age where
textual consumption is faced with short spans of attention.
Just
when we thought the day could not get any better, Sara Cantor Aye graced the
stage in a rather engaging presentation, Designing
Everything but the Food, which first had me wondering how it made the program. However, although
this presentation was more architectural in nature, it underscored some of the
key principles in user-centric design. By using design methods, the team at
Greater Good Studio helped improve a middle school cafeteria through
ethnographic research to inform industrial design. Through a series of changes
to how the food was presented and distributed, they managed to dramatically
improve how
the kids ate their food. That in turn led to less food
waste. It was an inspiring and interesting talk. Social Change? We think so!
***
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