Redux: Interaction 2012 Keynotes
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The keynote document provides a summary of six presentations given at the IxD12 conference. The presentations focused on how interaction design is changing and where it needs to head in the future. The document summarizes that the presenters called for designers to embrace the growing complexity and unpredictability in technology by focusing on disruptive rather than practical ideas, provoking change rather than just predicting trends, and exploring what could be rather than what should be through the use of "what if" thinking.
Redux: Interaction 2012 Keynotes
- 1. Embrace the madness IxD12 keynote recap IxDA Redux Boon Yew Chew 21 Feb 2012 SapientNitro @boonych Hi, my name is Boon and I’m a user experience designer here at SapientNitro. Tonight, I’ll be covering the six keynote presenta@ons at IxD12 in a very rapid 10 minutes
- 2. Anthony Dunne, Royal College of Arts Genevieve Bell, Intel Labs Luke Williams, Frog Design Amber Case, Cyborg Jonas Löwgren @boonych Fabien Hemmert, Anthropologist Malmö University Berlin University Here they are, as you can see – star@ng from the top leG we have Genevieve Bell from Intel Labs, Anthony Dunne from the Royal College of Arts Luke Williams from Frog Design Amber Case, who is a Cyborg Anthropologist and TED speaker Jonas Lowgren, Professor of Interac@on Design and co-‐founder of the School of Arts & Communica@on at Malmö University in Sweden And Fabien Hemmert, who is currently doing his PhD at Berlin University and is also a fellow TED speaker The aim of this talk is to give you a sense of where Interac@on Design is heading (or where we should be heading), based on the six keynotes.
- 3. Embrace Madness? @boonych So I decided to @tle this talk, “Embrace the Madness”, as a way to sum up the gist of the keynotes. But what does that mean?
- 4. Embrace Madness? Hundreds of different devices and a multitude of device types New behaviours are being discovered Our tools and methods becoming outdated Trends: no one really agrees Prediction becoming futile @boonych Well, we’re reaching a point where control is becoming impossible. It’s impossible to keep up with every single device out there be it tablet, phone or otherwise. New behaviours are being discovered. We’re also finding that many of the tools and methods we’re used to just don’t cut it anymore – we’re having to reinvent new ones. And it’s becoming increasingly pointless to predict what’s going to come next. So, it seems there’s only one way forward, which is to embrace the chaos.
- 5. Embrace Madness? OK Hundreds of different devices and a multitude of device types New behaviours are being discovered Our tools and methods becoming outdated Trends: no one really agrees Prediction becoming futile @boonych Or, completely give up, but I’m guessing none of us are thinking that right now. The big ques@on is HOW?
- 6. “Don’t worry about trying to select the most practical ideas; focus on the most disruptive ones.” Luke Williams Author, Professor & Fellow at Frog Design @boonych Well, here’s what Luke Williams from Frog Design says: “Don’t worry about selec@ng the most prac@cal ideas. Focus on the most disrup@ve ones”. Far too many businesses are trained to predict the next best thing, which merely leads (at best) to incremental change. We too, as designers, we’ve become good at is gebng a lot of ideas, but we can’t lead those ideas in a specific direc@on. And this approach is what leads us to paralysis.
- 7. Be the change “provoke, don’t predict” “avoid spotting and reacting” @boonych Instead, Luke calls on designers to provoke rather than predict. To avoid spobng trends and reac@ng to it. This allows us to break out of that cycle of complacency, and move away from making incremental changes that limit our opportuni@es. He uses the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Psycho, to illustrate the disrup@ve turning point in the movie. Just think -‐ what are some shower scene moments we can achieve in our own designs?
- 8. Biz disruptors Blockbuster < Netflix Motorola < Nokia Motorola & Nokia < Apple @boonych So, companies, paradigms, ideas, industries that are all trapped by this paralysis end up becoming obsolete by disruptors. Neclix, Nokia and Apple are just some disruptors you may be familiar with.
- 9. Biz disruptors IxD disruptors Mobile first Content out Blockbuster < Netflix Designers must code Motorola < Nokia Lean UX Motorola & Nokia < Apple Persuasive design @boonych It’s the same in our industry as well. Do these topics on the right feel commonplace in your vernacular? Or are they too controversial and hard to wrestle control of? I think Luke is right – we need to constantly rethink the way we’ve been doing things and not be afraid to take the leap. Again, the big ques@on is how?
- 10. Asking "what if" allows us to shift from designing for what is to designing for what could be Anthony Dunne Head of Design Interactions Programme Royal College of Art @boonych According to Anthony Dunne, one of ways to shiG this thinking is to ask “What if”. He says that designers tend to focus on what “should be” when they should be focusing on what “could be”.
- 11. D UL “Could be” is about... CO SHOULD EXPLORE Exploring possibilities Avoiding clichés @boonych The problem with “should be” is that it’s inherently limited in focus, so in order to avoid being trapped in the same cycle of old cliches, you need to consider more possibili@es in the design space.
- 12. 1 Fabien Hemmert: Making telecommunications more emotional 1. Intimate mobile 2. Weight-shifting mobile 3. Shape-changing mobile 2 3 @boonych I think one of the reasons why we don’t feel comfortable exploring the expansive realm of the possible is because we’re afraid of it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Fabien Hemmert’s research projects explored different ways we could make telecommunica@on more emo@onal, by prototyping devices that could kiss, breathe, shiG its weight around, and so on. The point of this is about enabling designers to make the impossible a reality by exploring the future through prototypes and learning from it.
- 13. “We have to get ideas out of our heads, even if they seem crazy. Only then can we enable discussions of how we'll live in the future …we must establish design as a knowledge producing discipline” Fabien Hemmert Berlin University TED speaker @boonych Here’s what he says: “We have to get ideas out of our heads, even if they seem crazy. Only then can we enable discussions of how we’ll live in the future. We must establish design as a knowledge producing discipline”
- 14. Body synths Touch + lights + sound @boonych So if we’re all going to embrace this madness, we’ll have to embrace new methods and new tools. Omnigraffle and Axure just won’t cut it anymore. Here’s an example of an interac@on scenario that wouldn’t work with wireframes. This is a photo of a body synth performer (on the leG) wearing a suit. The par@cipant on the right is invited to interact with the performer through touch, which glows and creates sounds as the par@cipant gets closer to the performer’s body.
- 15. For new interactions, for innovative interactions you need hi-fidelity prototype, wireframes are not enough Jonas Lowgren Co-founder & Professor of Interaction Design, School of Arts & Communication, Malmö University @boonych Keynote speaker Jonas Lowgren argues that for interac@ons like these, you need to get comfortable prototyping with hi-‐fidelity materials. This is becoming more important as we’re observing more of the temporal and non-‐idioma@c nature of digital interac@on today.
- 16. we found it very hard to figure out the interaction without going into code Jonas Lowgren As you would expect, this includes sketching in code, or coding with a sketching mindset. This is primarily because you’re pushing the code to explore the fuller range of possibili@es, which we as designers need to do to step away from our old cliches, as men@oned earlier.
- 17. 1739 @boonych So where does that leave us? Amber Case and Genevieve Bell took us on a historical journey to explore our rela@onship as human beings with technology. We started with a fascina@on of mechanising things in our own likeness and to nature, as you can see on the top leG with the Diges@ng Duck, which was the world’s first automaton in 1739.
- 18. 1739 @boonych Then, we started to augmen@ng our reali@es with technology so we could enhance our abili@es and lives. The man in the @meline is Mr. Steve Mann from MIT, the world’s first human cyborg, who wore these prosthe@cs as a way to augment reality. Much like how we use the iphone to navigate London, except much nerdier.
- 19. 1739 @boonych Meanwhile we also formed special rela@onships with our devices, by giving them human-‐like akributes (like you see in the Furby – Siri conversa@on above) and even extending that to the aGerlife (on the top right is a set of chinese paper ipads, which people burn at temples as part of their ritual to honor their ancestors). This really shows how integrated and complex technology has become in our lives. In conclusion, I want to leave you with two quotes from Amber and Genevieve.
- 20. “Your phone will become a remote control for reality” Amber Case Cyborg Anthropologist The first is about how technology has now become a huge extension of ourselves. In fact, she predicts that interfaces of the future will be increasingly invisible, to the point we won’t no@ce it anymore. The good news is that we don’t have to sit back and witness this future to happen. We can go out and invent it.
- 21. "We don't want machines that can think...we want machines that we can have relationships with." Genevieve Bell Intel Labs The second quote is from Genevieve Bell, who says “we don’t want machines that can think… We want machines that we can have rela@onships with”. I love this quote because it empowers us as designers to think beyond interac@ons and technologies and devices and come back to who we really are as human beings. And at the end of the day, if all we’re doing is enabling interac@ons between ourselves and other people amidst the madness of change, then it’s a madness I’m willing to embrace.
- 22. Thanks Boon Yew Chew @boonych www.gluethink.com Interaction 2013 Toronto, Canada “Social Impact, Social Innovation” @boonych And that’s the end of my talk. Thanks for listening.