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

Paola Antonelli is the design curator at the New York Museum of Modern Art and a leading voice in the power of design, shown most recently in her acclaimed 2008 exhibition Design for the Elastic Mind. Antonelli talked to us about how her process for creating an exhibition, the future of design, and how we make people and objects more elastic.

You have organized a lot of succesful exhibitions at MoMA. What is your approach when setting up a new exhibition?

Paola Antonelli

My passion is contemporary design; to look at how people live today and understand from that what’s going to happen the day after tomorrow. I never do science fiction movies, but I like to give some idea of the way we are going to live maybe in two to three years from now.

In order to do so first of all, a theme comes to mind, an idea. An idea is a dollar a pound, and it depends on which one you decide to develop that really makes it worthy of talking about. Let’s say you decide to develop a certain idea, you start to look for examples in the world of design all around the world that supports this idea. Now, when I say the world of design it doesn’t mean just the bona fide designers that get published in magazines. Sometimes it’s products that are already on the market that don’t really have a name attached. But, you know everything that is built is a form of design, so there is a lot to look at. I usually gather a lot of different material and begin to sculpt the exhibit, I usually start with too much and as you really prepare the exhibition certain objects get abandoned and others come to the surface. It’s a process, it really is. In the end it all comes together, but it never is completely finished. When it comes to contemporary design it is best to leave the exhibition slightly unfinished to let the public finish it itself.

When it comes to contemporary design it is best to leave the exhibition slightly unfinished to let the public finish it itself.

One of the strong points of MoMA is the ability to ‘experience’ an exhibition digitally. How far do you want to go with this? How far will this go in relationship to the physical exhibition?

I started the museum website in 1995, because my very first short MoMA was a show about new materials about design. I figured it would be good to have a website. So ever since, I’ve had websites for every show I’ve done. I consider the website a place to archive everything, every website has all the materials and an explanation of all the objects in the show. Progressively it has becomes a place for an experience, and I feel the experience should be different than the show itself.

I don’t see the website as a surrogate or a substitute to the show itself, but rather a space all on to its own. For every show there are three main spaces, one is the gallery space, another is the catalog if you do it, and a third is the website. Each one responds to different laws, and they lead you to different experiences. The website for ‘Design and the Elastic Mind‘ was truly an experience, one that you would either love or hate.  It was completely in Flash – Yugo Nakamura, who is considered to be one of the kings of Flash, was the creative director – and required you to really float around on and explore to experience it in full. It had a personality that was very distinct. It had nothing really to do with the show, even though it contained the same objects though they were organized for the space of the website.

Right now the limit to what can be done on the web is the software. The limits are the crashes and the speed download. So much that we can do more without, I don’t believe in doing virtual galleries. That’s a bad use of the medium. So much is imperfect. We have all tried to do exhibitions on SecondLife, but I’m sorry, it was terrible.

When setting up a new exhibition, how do you try and capture the attention of the audience? How do you lure people into the exhibition?

Design and the Elastic Mind

I don’t know. It kind of comes naturally. There needs to be a good balance, of course you want to convey a certain idea and you hope that the idea will push the whole world a little further and forward. But, at the same time you need to do it with some grace without being too pandering and too heavy. So there are always a little sense of humor in certain objects, some lightness every now and then, even when you have a serious message to convey. Then there is also the idea that you want to show that design is a very creative discipline and that there is playfulness in it and talent, but there is also a lot of thinking and reasoning. And, more than anything, there is a lot of thinking about human beings.

However, people usually like it better when it’s not that abstract, where their lives are not at stake. So one of the best ways to make the exhibition engaging for people is to make them understand that it is about people.  What designs do is they really focus on people’s lives, even when they use the most advanced of technologies. They are the ones that guarantee that these devices actually work for people. It’s a mixture of that and the overall design of the space, ensuring its attractiveness, and the choice of objects. I always compare curators, especially curators at MoMA, to movie directors. It’s as if I was the director and MoMA was the studio. Each director has their own personality. It really has to do with the philosophy of displaying and the philosophy of exhibiting.

You see a lot of new forms of design popping up, like ‘critical design’ and ‘green design’. What new form of design appeals to you the most?

“Design for the Elastic Mind” was all about new forms of design. But, the type of design that I’m really interested in is all of them. I love the way designers work with scientists, biomimicry, and nanodesign. I love tissue design, behavioral design, and I’m interested in social design depending on how it’s done. I’m very passionate about informational design and visualization, I think it is one of the biggest avenues for designers in the future. In a way, I’m interested in any form of design that doesn’t start with an object but rather starts with reasoning. A reasoning about how people live and how they could live better in the future.

What, for the coming decade, will be an important influence/change for the way we approach design?

I think more and more it will be not about objects, but rather about other things. Or at least the objects will be in the computer screen. I think the designer that are going to survive are the ones that have studied how to make chairs, but are more interested in experiences, interaction, and interfaces. The next show that I’m working on is about this, called “Talk to Me.” It’s about the communication between people and objects. I really believe that’s what’s going to happen the most.

I also feel that designers will start to be employed more in policy making, and sociology and ethnography. Their knowledge of how people think and behave will be exploited better.

Over the last decade, which product has made the most impact on you and why?

The iPod, which then became the iPhone, really it’s the whole i-suite. I use a BlackBerry personally, but any kind of portable communication device that supports both text and email has revolutionized our life the most.

How do you see the balance between input from users and the brilliance of designers when designing new products?

It depends on the product, because every product requires a different balance. There are some products that are all about how people want them to be: these tend to be open source. There are others where people want the hand, or mind, of designer. They want the signature. It’s becoming more and more thinking before doing, and understanding where the object sits. Let’s say you want to buy a Cabana chair for $10,000, you don’t want your input in it. You want it to be their input only. Instead, you want to customize your Firefox, you want to customize it all by yourself. Your input is in the parts you decide to assemble and all the plugins that you want. So you see, there is a big difference between the functionality and symbolism of the object.

In an article you once wrote that “the figure of the designer is changing from form giver to fundamental interpreter of an extraordinary dynamic reality”. What did you mean by this?

What’s happening is that designers used to be those that made chairs, or those that made posters. Instead, right now they look at the way people live and they try to translate their observations into better products, better interfaces. Objects that are better, more flexible, more adaptable, and more elegant artifacts that we can surround ourselves with. Since people are changing everyday faster, and what’s happened in the past decade is the rate of change has become more rapid, what designers have to do is first and foremost be like anthropologists, or ethnographers. They have to observe how things happen and interpret them as fast as possible in a smart way.

What designers have to do is first and foremost be like anthropologists … observe how things happen and interpret them as fast as possible in a smart way.

In the same article you wrote this beautiful sentence “If design is to help enable us to live to the fullest while taking advantage of all the possibilities provided by contemporary technology, designers need to make both people and objects perfectly elastic” How do you make people more elastic?

People might become more elastic before you make them. But, it’s a matter of open-mindedness and getting people to accept change. The reason people call innovation distributive is because when it’s imposed upon society by the people creating it, they don’t give a damn about the people. They don’t care about the consequences of the innovation, rather they just pass on the innovation to society. Designers try to ensure that innovations are able to be used by people and it speaks the language that the people are familiar with. This is how you make objects more elastic, how you make people more elastic is by making them more comfortable with change as it happens. It’s not a one way street, both people and objects need to have better interfaces.

Interaction 10

If you want to meet Paola Antonelli in real life: she 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).