After a night of some great parties, and even better conversation, the second day of Interaction 10 began with a preview of the new IxDA.org website redesign. The team doing the redesign covered all the great new features that are coming, and went into detail on how local groups will be able to leverage the new site for their own networks and events. The excitement from yesterday was easily carried over, and people were pumped to see what the presenters had in store for us today.

Opening keynote: Ezio Manzini – Design for social innovation and sustainability

Ezio Manzini

Today’s opening keynote, given by Ezio Manzini, built on a lot of the topics covered in yesterday’s opening keynote. The topic revolved again around the subject of sustainable design, and its role in society. Ezio started off with the message that interaction designers are some of the best people to talk to regarding this as we are young both as a profession and as designers.

Over the course of the presentation, he touched on the various signals signifying the rise of a new economy. The economy of the future isn’t some utopian idea, but rather something that exists today within the framework of the old economy. The focus of the new economy will no longer be around particular products, but rather services and interactions. And most of these interactions will be totally new to us. The signals that are directing us towards this world changing economy were summed up using real world examples that are happening right now:

• Individuals and communities are inventing new ways of living. The emphasis of this point surrounded the agriculture industry and the way economics of farming are changing. People are starting to get their produce more from farm shares and farmer markets rather than big produce stores. This act of getting back to the providers of nutritional substance allows people to become more connected with the people that provide these services, but also to their local communities.
• Digital platforms are becoming catalyzers of social change. Being better connected with those around you creating an aggregation of the social action. Based on shared values and beliefs, they are able to act on these things both within their local communities and on a larger scale.
• A new scenario is emerging. Though we may not know what a sustainable society looks like, we at least have an idea. This idea is rooted in the simple concepts of Small, Local, Open, and Connected. These concepts can be mashed up in a variety of ways to think of new ways to accomplish old tasks, and allows us to create a better framework for this new economy that is being created.

In order to ensure that the new economy works in the long run, the services and interactive products produced to fuel the economy need to satisfy people’s needs and enhance their capabilities. These new services and products also need to have a goal of enabling systems (similar to the message of engagement from yesterday’s keynote). This enabling platform needs to be accessible for normal people, effective, and most importantly create a sense of trust. In the end, there is the potential for great beauty in this enabling platform.

Shelly Evenson – Service As Design

The topic of service design has come up several times already at the conference, both in the back channels and in other presentations. Shelly’s talk was interesting as it provided a great visualization of what true Service Design is, backed up by some the work her past students have done. One of the first great points she makes is about the overall context of objects today. It used it be, 15 years ago, that to order a special pair of shoes you would have to do it via a stores product catalog. Once ordered, those shoes could take up to six weeks to arrive. Today, however, it can take a mere 24 hours from when the order was placed to when the shoes arrive at you door step. Because of this increase in turn around, peoples expectations are higher today. They are looking for more faster, and it can lead to the inability to cope very quickly with all the information we are bombarded with.

This setting of the context leads directly into why service design is so important. Service Design facilitates a multifaceted and co-produced experience, with many touch points and variety of dependencies. These touch-points included People, Product, Place, Process, and Performance, and when they all come together you have something you can call a Service. People interact with each of these touch points, and it’s the path that they take which in the end fosters some kind of experience.

Today, we are seeing more and more of a mash up of social and service. People are able to tweet about a particular service, which opens them up to being directly contacted by someone representing the company behind the service. When performing Service Design in the modern, connected, world, you are creating affordances in which for people to engage in the overall conversation. The themes that make up these affordances are People, Time, Place, Usability, Visualization, and finding and organizing. The resources we design to invoke experiences must respect these affordances, and capitalize on them in new and exciting ways.

Timo Arnall – Designing for the Web in the World

Timos itterative model

Timo is a designer leading and collaborating on international projects and research on mobile technology and media out of Oslo, Norway. Timo, being a very skilled photographer and film maker, gave a very visually pleasing presentation with lots of moving video and beautiful layered graphics. In his talk, he showed us the results and findings from his work where he and his team has explored what we do with the internet “beyond the glowing screen of computers” . He also gave us a set of basic findings in his research that can be used as a tool for successfully design these kind of products.

The talk covered a mix of examples from other already existing products and examples of projects where his team had experimented with how Near Field Communication (NFC) devices such as RFID (40 billion around the globe) can be integrated in to products. He also touched briefly on the ethical issues around the use of NFC. Some of these examples of the existing were mobile tracking applications like Nokia Sports tracker and Nike Plus. The projects made by Timo and his team are great examples of how they have experimented with NFC to create new interactions and very pleasantly looking objects with a digital interface in them. Again also beautiful examples of video and product production and several of the projects he showed you can see for yourself at Timo’s Vimeo Channel.

To finish off, Timo listed three central aspects to both evaluate how successful existing NFC objects are, and as a basis for criteria when designing new objects that can also be used as an iterative cycle.

1. Immediate tangible experience – Don’t wait with giving feedback
2. Short term connecting and sharing – Satisfaction through sharing/comparing of results
3. Long term service, data & visualization – Well working online services to mediate social space

Read more of Timo’s research at http://nearfield.org and http://aho.no

Ben Fullerton – Designing for Solitude

Not only was this session standing room only, but people took up seats on the floor wherever they could. Ben delivered one of the most interesting talks of the day, dealing not with any particular practice or process but rather a state of mind. He starts off by stating that we all have the assumption that being connected is a good thing, but that there is an alternative state that also needs attention: solitude.

In order to show the importance of solitude from a historical point of view, he discussed how Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad all take their own solitary journey in order to reach a certain level of spirituality. Another example was an author who spent 10 years holed up in a library, completely alone, in order to write his masterpiece: it turns out that many of the great creatives all used some form of isolation in order to do some of their best work.

There’s too much stuff. We live in a stuff-a-lanche – Charlie Broker

In the past, the devices we used in our everyday life only had a single mode to them. Products of the present are becoming more and more multi modal, providing more unique types of interaction all at the same time. To combat this certain products are going back to this single mode of interaction, including a music/phone device he helped design. Rather than allow for you to access either function at the same time, there was a define toggle that turned one aspect of the device off in order to perform the other. You could either listen to music, or you could send and receive phone calls, but never at the same time. This idea can also be found in the “Quiet Cars” found on Amtrak trains. If you decide to sit in this area of the train, you are not allowed to disturb the others around you: no loud music, no friendly banter, not even excessive coughing or sneezing is allowed. All of this is in place to ensure that passengers have a place in which they can get away from everything. Allowing yourself to get away from everything, or disconnect, is Ben’s big call to action. There is nothing wrong with BEING connected, just allow yourself the freedom to disconnect too.

Kevin Cheng – Augmented reality: Is it real? Should we care?

Google search statistics for Augmented Reality

Kevin, entertaining as always, gave us a very thorough rundown on the current market of existing augmented reality applications out there. He even managed to have a live demo of a couple of them for iPhone. It was a mix of both entertaining variants and more or less useful ones.

AR is a term to describe the real-time merging of various technologies with the real world to create a mixed, augmented reality. Going on at looking at the history of augmented reality we have seen examples of this from the world of movies for over 20 years but it is not until with the computing power of mobile phones that we start to see a boom in the development of these types of applications.

Even so there is still a slight lack in accuracy with the current technology like GPS and electronic compasses so we will have to wait a bit longer before we see some more advanced applications. This might also be there reason why there are currently no established standards to how to design for AR.

By researching Google, Kevin could show a distinct increase in the search patterns for AR during the last two years. Notable was that the top five countries on the list were Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, a clear indication that this is a region of the world to keep your eyes on in regards to AR.

Steve Baty – Lunch Discussion, UX Book Club

UX Book Club founder (as well as IXDA VP and fellow Johnny) Steve Baty organized an opportunity at lunchtime to discuss books by two of the speakers at the conference, Thoughts on Interaction by Jon Kolko and Designing for Interaction by Dan Saffer. Both authors also took the opportunity to join in in the discussions and a short Q&A after the discussions. It was a very light hearted event where Steve introduced the audience of around 150 people to the concept of  UX book club and urged us to all do the same in our home area. Anahi Bagu and Will Evans gave us a short introduction to each of the books and then we dived in to lively discussions for about 20 minutes on both the books and adjacent subjects. Finally the two authors stepped up for a short Q&A whilst the audience was chanting “Two men enter. One man leaves!”

Two men enter. One man leaves!

This is an extremely simple but yet rewarding experience that you easily can set up where you live or even at your work place. Having the authors on the spot was an added luxury but not necessary for a successful UX book club.

Chris Fahey – The Human Interface

Things to try from Chris Fahey's talk

We are cyborgs. This is the statement Chris uses to kick off his session into why human like interfaces are important and what are the danger zones that should be avoided with regards to allowing technology replace humans. For many years it has been a fear that one day technology will some how replace humans. According to Chris, the best way to alleviate this fear is to not let technology replace us, but rather having human behavior become reflected in the technology that we use.

As designers we need to capitalize on the fact the people already give objects a bit of humanity by anthropomorphism. Since this is one of our standard behaviors, it isn’t much a leap to use that knowledge in the overall design of what we create. The way to do this is by concentrating on Strong Centers, Positive and Negative Space, Roughness, and Echoes. The world of game design has been hitting these areas recently and it has been a huge success for them.
Chris’s session was wrapped up by going over the three qualia of the human interface:

• Sentience - The ability to see or feel subjectively. This is best described by the advancement of voice or facial recognition over the years.
• Intimacy – This can be facilitated with or through machines. Devices are able to better detect our presence and collect personal information about us in the background.
• Personality – We want to see the things we use have a personality. We want to see ‘faces’ in the stuff we interact with.

The final message of “If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us”  is one that we can all use posted up on our walls, or cubes, in order to remind us of the human aspects of our designs.

If we don’t humanize our products, our products will mechanize us – Chris Fahey

Closing Keynote: Paola Antonelli – Talk to Me

Tonight’s closing presentation was given by Paola Antonelle, of the Museum of Modern Arts in New York City.

Paola Antonelli. Image by Monica Ferro

She started off by explaining how objects have always spoken to her, sometimes in the most peculiar ways. Walking down the street, stop lights, TV’s, or bus signs all speak to her in a very cartoonish manner. But by having this conversation with everyday objects, she is constantly finding new things to add to her next exhibits. In truth, we all have conversations with technology, thanks to the interfaces that helps to put a face to these objects. It allows us to communicate and interact at a very personal level, both positive and negative ways. It’s important that this face is able to not only communicate, but also be functional, provide instruction, and allows us to access relevant information.

Paola then ran through an amazing range of relevant and beautiful design projects including Crossroads, Significant Objects, We Feel Fine and Josh On.
In closing, she gave us some insight on her struggle to get the ‘@’ symbol not only included in some of her exhibits, but also making it a permanent fixture of the museum. This symbol which so many of us use everyday has been around for centuries, even going so far as span languages. At some point, accountants started to use it to refer to something, such as four bags of flours @ $50.00 a bag. Why she feels that is has a place in the museum is that fact that when the email was invented, the reason the “@” was chosen was thanks to its traditional usage. The only thing that changed was its context of use.
Paola suggests that the ‘@’ sign should be treated as a design artefact because of its history and how well it translated into our technological world, therefore highlighting the role it has played over the years.

Objects have always spoken to us – Paola Antonelli

The first day of Interaction 10, hosted by SCAD in the wonderful city of Savannah, Georgia, kicked off without a hitch. Though eventually everyone was plagued by spotty, windy rain storms, the general pulse of the conference was positive and uplifting. Attendees were still talking about some of the great workshops from the day before, and they carried that energy over into today’s sessions. If one thing had to describe the overall theme of the first day it would be the importance of providing meaning in the work that we do. Below are recaps of the opening and closing keynotes, as well as some of the sessions from the day.

Nathan Shedroff – Morning Keynote

The opening keynote came with a message of why it’s important for us as designers to innovate. Drawing from his books Making Meaning and Design is the Problem,  Nathan Shedroff approached the topic from the businesses point of view and provided insight on how our skills can help them. The goal of any business is to grow, but the only type of growth that leads to continued success is organic growth. Sure, you can rebrand easy few years, but after a while people catch on to what you’re doing. The key to ensuring lasting, organic growth is providing meaning to the people that use the products or services companies provide. Innovation is the means to providing this meaning.

Meaning comes in the shape and form of the experiences we are exposed to. Luckily for us, there are a finite number of core values that describe meaning, which Nathan describes as the following:

• Accomplishment
• Beauty
• Community
• Creation
• Duty
• Enlightenment
• Freedom
• Harmony
• Justice
• Oneness
• Redemption
• Security
• Truth
• Validation
• Wonder

What makes something meaningful to one person over another is how people prioritize these core values. In order to understand how a particular group of people rank these values, it’s necessary to do a lot of qualitative research. By understanding this ranking, we are able to trigger meaning in the things we design and bring meaning to the work that we do.

The keynote wrapped up with Nathan describing how strategic design is looking for the overlap of meaning between a company, team, and customer base. If there is little to no overlap, than something is off: the wrong customers are being served or the wrong team is trying to do the job. All of these lead to the statement of “Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet.” Interaction designers are poised to be the ones that come up with this new solution, as we have the models and research methods that serve us well.

Consumerism isn’t dead, but it should be. It hasn’t served us well. But, we don’t know what to replace it with yet. – Nathan Shedroff

(The presentation and related material are available on Nathan’s website – also check out the interview we did with Nathan)

Dave Gray – Knowledge Games

Any presentation that starts off with a detailed history of the AK-47 is sure to be challenging. Dave’s overview of Knowledge Games and their role in the design didn’t disappoint. The design philosophy that drove the creation of the AK-47 is the same one he is using to develop his framework around knowledge games: keep it simple, make it rugged, ensure that it is reliable, and that it is lightweight. His goal with creating knowledge games is to provide the tools that anyone can use to design better things, regardless of whether that person is a designer or not.

Don’t over think things. – Dave Gray

Dave Gray and the AK47

How do knowledge games help in the world of design? It gives us a framework for getting from point A to point B. It allows us to open up a problem, explore the problem space, and come to a closing point where we have a defined outcome. Here are some key points that we took away from this session:

• Never open something you can’t close;
• Ask questions that get people fired up, that gets them talking and brainstorming some ideas;
• Create a meaningful space in order to do work in. A space that inspires us to create, think, and collaborate;
• Sketch, everyone can draw. If you can draw basic shapes, you can draw just about anything;
• Choose what you will finally create well. Be critical and kill a lot of babies. (This came up a lot for some reason over the course of the presentation.)

Dave ended with perhaps the best message possible. “Don’t overthink things.” This is something that plagues us all sometimes, and it’s good advice to follow no matter what you happen to be doing.

Nate Bolt – Remote User Research

The popularity of performing remote user research is growing. Nate did a great job giving an overview of the value remote user research brings to the design process and highlighted some of the best tools that are available today. He is passionate about this subject, which is best highlighted by a book he is co-authoring and being published by Rosenfeld Media.

He started off by clarifying that the research user experience really cares about revolves around the behavior of people.  While the majority of all user research being done today is still in-person, remote research is gaining popularity. This is firstly because it’s easier to get someone to show up to a remote web meeting than it is to an unfamiliar office or conference room. Another advantage is that it’s easier to pause a study to iterate a design if the research is being done remotely.

If you can put it on the web, it can be studied and tested. – Nate Bolt

One of the most valued aspects of performing remote user research is mashing it up with traditional methods. Since the cost of some of these tools are so low, it’s easy to do a good mix of qualitative and quantitative research. All of the tools he covered are showcased here at RemoteUsability.com

Matt Cottam – Wooden Logic: In Search of Heirloom Electronics

Matt Cottam’s talk explored how natural materials and craft traditions can be brought to the center of interactive digital design to give modern products greater longevity and meaning. This was a very inspiring talk on how to work with electronics prototyping combined with classic wood carpenter craftsmanship.

The initial reason why Matt founded his company, Tellart, was the current disconnect we as designers have from the technology we design for. Matt compared the crafts industry in the mid to early 20th century when design was often closely related also to the technical side of the craft like the loom industry where textile designers and the loom technicians were educated in the same school. This closeness created a good setting for creating these products with longevity and meaning. Compared to today, there is a gap between interaction designers, programmers and electronics designers. What Matt is trying to do through his work is to close that gap, or at least make it smaller.

Part of his work has also been about experimenting with the patina process of objects and how to actually control it. As an example he showed models of toy boats that were put in a bag with ground coffee and then put in a river for several months, which was a very successful way of faking patina. Several of the student projects revolved around the challenge of doing user interface prototyping without computers, often with a very limited time and space, putting lots of emphasis on the presentation of the results.

Drawing examples from numerous student projects Matt has done over the last year with students at CIID, UID and his team he showed very interesting results on how to combine traditional material with modern electronics such as sensors and switches to create new unexpected combinations.

Tellart has created a client server application for iPhone that makes it extremely quick to do simple iPhone apps that communicate with hardware in literally a couple of days. The application is open source and you can read more about it at the Google code site.

All in all, the presentation showed very promising examples, if maybe not the final answers of what he wanted to achieve. You get the feeling that Matt is on to something that could potentially be big in the coming years, certainly in connection to the conference’s overall theme on creating meaning to the things we design.

Activity: Design Jam

Cupcake Carrier Sketches

The leaders of the Portland IxDA group gave a large group of people a run down on a common activity they perform at their meet ups. Jeanne Turner and Barbara Holmes created the activity of Design Jams in order avoid designers from getting burned out and over worked. The technique is borrowed from jam sessions that musicians do in order to avoid the very same things. During the jam session it isn’t about making something real, but rather about play and having fun. During the design jams, designer discuss, sketch, explore, and listen to each others ideas about how to solve a defined problem. By doing so, they learn new methods for solving the same problem and more importantly learn from each other.

The Design Jam has some simple rules that people must follow.

1. Solve real, concrete design problems
2. No limits to what can be discussed or designed
3. No stakeholders allowed. Everyone is a designer
4. Random groups each time
5. At the end everyone has to present their designs and what the contributed to the solution

With this the actual design jam started with the crowd being given one of two problems to solve: redesign luggage carrier to avoid clothes getting wrinkled while travelling, or a means to transport cupcakes without damaging the cupcakes. My group choose the cupcakes problem. After much discussion and exploration some of the top solutions came out to be using hard sugar in the icing, create scalable containers, use an edible container, generate magnetic cupcakes, and use tooth picks with gummies stuck to the top to provide additional support. The great thing about this activity was that it was simple, very interactive, and something that any group would be able to easily host for one of their meet ups.

Kendra Shimmell – Environments: The Future of Interaction Design

Kendra Shummel in action

I was told this talk was actually a bit of a wild card in the program and I can attest to that it as it was very inspiring and entertaining to see. To quote Kendra herself from the day before: “Sometimes you joke about how during a work meeting you should stand up and do improv dancing, and here I am going up on stage doing just that at an interaction design conference”.

We all need, and try, to do other things than our normal work to get perspective on things. Kendra being a trained dancer since the age of four wanted to give us a glimpse into her world of how she uses dance as an alternate way of approaching her design challenges. Kendra started up with talking about the similarities in choreography and interaction design, and how they are connected in staging activities over time in order to convey meaning. Of course in dance there are a whole lot more choreography.

For the second half of the talk, Kendra had in collaboration with Robert Wechsler from palindrome set up a motion tracking system that was hooked up to an application that that detects movements in three dimensional space. By connecting defined volumes in this space  to virtual triggers and scales, loops of sounds, talk, and noise Kendra created new music completely based on the movements from her improv dance. The whole experience is very hard to reproduce in text. All talks were recorded and will be put on the IxDA website with in the coming weeks and if you  decide to watch any of them this is definitely one of the ones you should not miss.

Nicolas Nova – Observing Failures to Provoking Them

Failure is cool. Not only was this the statement on the opening slide, but it sums up the overall session as well. Using personal experiences, Nicolas showed a packed house how vital failure is in the art of design and how much we can learn from it when we try to make it happen. The main focus of the presentation was on the failure of products, specifically automated products such as doors and light switches. What makes these products so interesting is how easy it is to observe the failures in action, showcased by a sensor used on Swedish trains for automatically opening the doors between cars.

Some of the more interesting behaviors he has witnessed involved talking to motion based sensors, and stomping on the ground when the sensors where located near the floor. These behaviors arise due to the invisible nature around automatic products, and a person’s inability to discern how they work. The failures themselves are unique since in the past they may not have ever existed, and thanks to advancements in technology we are able to view them for the first time. There are some common reasons why automatic devices fail though:

• Distinguishing the automatic from the non-automatic
• Invisible or illegible “locus of control”
• Too quick or too slow to activate
• Weather dependent calibration
• Different ‘door’ conventions (e.g. swing vs retracting doors)

A common problem that arises when these automatic devices fail is “Individual-Blame Bias.” People start to get blamed or end up blaming themselves for the failure of technology. After a while, people get fed up and will lash out in frustration at these devices. A great example he used was a robot that helps in the care of people in a hospital. This poor robot would get kicked by patients when it came around to do its duties, for simply coming in at the wrong time.

The session wrapped up by exploring a technique called the “Anti-Probe”, which is meant to provoke a failure. One of the cases he went over where he had used this technique was with regards to the use of the Wii remote. His team modified the remote calibration to make small movements to generate huge reactions while playing a game. Surprisingly, the participants actually really enjoyed this behavior since it took a little effort in order to cause such a huge reaction. These provoked failure lead to the insight of how important it is to see how people react, what new solutions they create, and how annoyed they might get when something does go wrong. This allows the team to use failure as a design tactic and to use failure as an inspiration rather than a hindrance.

Jon Kolko – Closing Keynote

Jon Kolko

Jon Kolko started by offering four pillars which our profession resides upon: experience, behavior, meaning, and culture.

According to Jon, the word ‘experience’ is special and should be used with reserve. This is because we all have one, and no matter what that experience is unique to each person involved in the experience. Factors that help shape the experience are the complexity of ourselves that we bring to it, design artefacts, natural events, and the other people surrounding the experience. This is why though designers may be given the same input and use the same process, the end solutions will be drastically different. Therefore, the key to getting people involved in experiences is through engagement: this, rather than repeatability, is key to good experiences. It’s up to designers to be less prescriptive, focus on the space between, and strive for real engagement.

An echo from his article Our Misguided Focus on Brand and User Experience, Jon again proposed why designers have the power to change culture, and that we have the ability to affect massive and acute change in society. To showcase this point, he talked about a project one of his students did where she went in search for the answer to the question “What’s the deal with deal with kids, beer, and sex?” After collecting some amazing quotes from college students, her solution to this problem was presented. In order to raise awareness of the dangers of unprotected sex, she attached condoms and important information to bottles of beer. The result was an increase in college students practising safe sex. She was able to accomplish this by empathizing with the people she was studying, and designing something that was aligned to how they actually behave.

The final point of his keynote revolved around the quote “Good design is a privilege rather than a right in today’s world.” He states that in some cases, it’s not money that is preventing people from using new technology but perceived complexity. To illustrate this point, he told the story of teachers who refused to use PC’s in their classroom due to the poor performance. The solution to this poor performance was regular maintenance of re-imaging the machines, something a standard school teach just doesn’t have the time to do. His team at frog design helped with this problem helping HP provide a machine that would re-image itself at the end of each computer session. Teachers were then able to use all the advanced tools available to them without having to deal with all the overhead of maintaining the computers. This lead to his closing message of “Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave”.

Designing for real cultural change starts by understanding how people currently behave. – Jon Kolko

The first day of the conference ended on a high note, poor weather notwithstanding. Day 2 has some big shoes to fill based on the sessions of today, but the promise of the session for tomorrow lead us to believe that tomorrow will be just as informative and inspiring as today was.

—-

All images by Brad Nunnally and Niklas Wolkert

Nathan Shedroff is a leading author in experience design and the increasing value of design. His book subjects have included experience design (the 2001 experience-in-itself-book Experience Design 1), design thinking  (Making Meaning, 2006) and sustainable design (Design is the Problem, 2009). He is currently the head of the Design MBA Strategy at the California Institute of Arts (CCA).

Shedroff spoke to me about the difference between businesspeople and designers, his upcoming foray into sci-fi, and what designers wanting to get involved in sustainability can do.

VT:You’ve had an interesting history, starting in automotive design. How did you get interested in user experience?

Nathan Shedroff

I think that user experience was always an interest of mine but back in the 80s it wasn’t framed as a common or even legitimate part of the design discussion. I remember proposing a project in my Ergonomics course at ArtCenter to evaluate the organisation and functionality of car engine compartments and my instructor couldn’t see how it related to ergonomics. I certainly didn’t know enough to frame the investigation as “user experience” and that my users were mechanics back then, but the driving and owning experience was a large part of what interested me about cars.

From there, I moved into information design in a publishing context [TheUnderstandingBusiness and the award winning Vivid Studios]. That was clearly all about user understanding and experience, even if the medium was more narrow – in some ways -than what ultimately is available today in electronic media.

Your first book ‘Experience Design’ was published in 2001. What’s changed in the field since then?

Experience Design (2001)

Mostly, what’s changed is that “user experience” and “customer experience” is now, nearly universally, considered an important, legitimate part of an organisation’s offering – even by those that only pay this lip-service. This doesn’t mean that they practice it or do so well, but it’s recognised by nearly every consumer organization and many B2B companies as well. Similarly, even many of those vocal pundits back in 2001 who complained about the term “experience design” and how vague it was are full-fledged proponents of it, using that very term to differentiate their consulting.

What hasn’t changed is what experience design has always been about and its dimensions and elements. While I’ve added text to the updated book, Experience Design 1.1, the same topics are just as relevant today and will be just as relevant in 100 years as these are universals about human experience. For sure, many of the online or digital examples are gone so I’ve kept some and replaced others, but the teachings about why these elements are important, and what designers need to think about when building experiences will probably never change.

Excerpt from Experience Design 1.0 - IDEO Kiss Communicator

Making Meaning took a far more business-minded (or ‘design thinking’) approach. What was different talking to business rather than design?

Making Meaning

Business people have their own language and focus more on certain management issues. In addition, the vast majority of those who go into “business” are more comfortable with certain processes and modes of thinking. Many rely on consistency and structure to manage processes in predictable ways. They want regularity and to eliminate deviations. Many designers specifically go into the design field because they don’t like these conditions. They like serendipity, challenge, and novelty. They hate it when everything is the same, day in and day out.

Both are required processes, of course. Roger Martin speaks eloquently about the need for both in his books. However, practitioners of both approaches believe, in their own little worlds, that theirs is not only the superior way to build and manage businesses but often the only valid way. This is a fallacy and often the seed of eventual destruction – of offering, of market share, and of culture.

Making Meaning was, by all means, a business book. It began as a business case for experience design. Steve Diller and I had outlined the dimensions and elements of experiences and we kept banging into “meaning.” We knew it was important but we didn’t know how to model or describe it. After some investigation, it was Steve who proposed a model for how meaning worked in experience and it was at that point that we realized that this was not only the most important and strategic aspect of experience, but that it had incredible potential for businesses. So, we turned the book inside out, around meaning, and rewrote the book around meaningful experiences and the processes and steps organizations could use to make them.

we realized that [the concept of meaning] was not only the most important and strategic aspect of experience, but that it had incredible potential for businesses.

The language of the book is more geared to businesspeople and managers but the meaning and experience models are just as appropriate for designers and the language shouldn’t preclude anyone from understanding it. Unfortunately, none of the diagrams for this made it into the book so I’ve made them available on my site in my various slide presentations on the subject. I think these are much easier for designers, and some businesspeople, to understand.

Diagrams from 'Creating Meaningful Experiences'

Your most recent book ‘Design is the Problem’ is a guidebook for designers to use their skills in the field of sustainability. How did you get involved in sustainable design?

Design is the Problem

I earned my MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School in 2006 and Design is the Problem is essentially what I learned about sustainability through that journey from a design perspective. It was clear to me in 2004 that not only was “business” the future of “design” (in the sense that designers needed to understand business issues, processes, and language if they were to have the influence they thought they should), but that “sustainable business” was the future of “business.” So, when a friend suggested that I join her at Presidio, I decided to drink my own Kool-Aid(™) and explore this double-jump into the future.

I very much value my degree but I don’t think it’s realistic to think that every designer is going to take two years to learn about sustainability and business. Yet, it’s critical information that every designer needs to understand. My book is an attempt to get designers up-to-speed quickly, in one book, without sacrificing the principles behind a real understanding of sustainability. The resource list, in the back of the book, helps them move further in whatever direction that is interesting to them, after having gotten a good foundation in the intersection of design and sustainability.

One of your main points in Design is the Problem is the importance of a systems approach to design – something that many designers don’t find particularly interesting. How have designers responded to the book and frameworks?

Very positively. In fact, the only negatives I’ve heard are reactions to the title by designers who haven’t yet read the book. Mostly, I’ve heard a lot of relief and gratitude for laying-out an approach for understanding the principles, frameworks, tools, and design strategies for sustainability. I’ve since started calling this set of concepts, the “sustainable innovation model” and I think it can help anyone quickly come up-to-speed on the domain. It’s probably not complete but I think that all of the basics are there, especially in terms of systems thinking, and there’s a lot in the strategies that designers, engineers, and managers can put into practice immediately. It’s not meant to be the only book you’ll ever have to read on the subject but, instead, the first book that can orient you to the complexities without overwhelming you.

[Design is the Problem is] not meant to be the only book you’ll ever have to read on the subject but, instead, the first book that can orient you to the complexities without overwhelming you.

Sustainability Helix from Design is the Problem

Your books have ranged from storytelling to life cycle analysis. Is there an overall theme to the areas you write about, or do you see it as how design is developing?

I think it’s more about how my interests intersect where design is going. I’ve been lucky to have hit on subjects that were important to me that also became important to design. I doubt that this will always be the case. However, it’s clear to me that business, design, and sustainability can no longer be approached or practiced separately and that one of the most powerful points at this intersection is meaning. My last four books have been right at that intersection.

My next book, Make It So, co-written with Chris Noessel, is about a completely different topic: what interaction designers can learn from science fiction interfaces. It’s a book I’ve wanted to write since 1989 and it’s so much fun to work on. I doubt it will be where “design is developing” in the same way that the last four have been but it will probably be more successful because, really, what designers don’t like science fiction (and even a little sex thrown in!)?

business, design, and sustainability can no longer be approached or practiced separately and that one of the most powerful points at this intersection is meaning.

What other projects are you working on now?

Along with books and speaking, my main focus for now is on CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy and Leading by Design Fellows programs – I’m still building an alumni network and career function to have ready by the time our first graduates finish in May of next year. I always have a few projects on the back burners that will get pulled to the front after that.

Having worked across so many fields, what would a dream project for you be?

I’d like to redesign the experience of television news – and television itself. I’d like to work on rethinking publishing as a model and industry. I’d also like to rethink how the government provides services to citizens. I think smartphones need a more useful front-end for communication (and if the iPhone’s APIs were more open, we could build it).
I also like big questions: What does a post-consumer world look like? We don’t yet know. We need to rethink consumerism, meaning and growth. These don’t have the same contexts anymore and they aren’t serving us in the ways they have in the past.

Can you tell us about what you’ll be talking about at Interaction 10?

I’ll focus more on what interaction designers can do with the principles of sustainability. Often, interaction designers look at the design strategies and think “this is all about physical products and material impact and my work doesn’t deal with these.” This is somewhat true but there are several ways that interaction designers can make a positive impact in their work with regards to greater sustainability, whether that’s ecological impacts, social and cultural impacts, or financial impacts. At the very least, I want people to leave my talk with a foundation that gives them some confidence – if not courage – to start exploring more and being able to start a conversation within their organisations and with their clients about these issues.

Finally, if our readers wanted to start incorporating sustainability into their own design companies and client work, what’s something they can do right away?

Design things that are truly useful, usable, and desirable.
Design things that are meaningful
Look at the systems involved before designing anything and think about providing value through services instead of only through objects.
Dematerialise products, services, packaging, transportation–everything that you can.
Learn and have fun doing this.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Nathan Shedroff in real life: he is one of the keynote speakers at Interaction 10. It is the third annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). Each year, IxDA aims to gather the interaction design community to connect, educate, and inspire each other. This year it is held in Savannah, Georgia (USA).

Image Credits
Kiss Communicator picture taken from Experience Design Books
Making Meaning diagrams from ‘Creating Meaningful Experiences’ PDF // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Sustainability Helix from Rosenfeld Media Flickr set // CC BY-NC-SA 2.0