Takeaways from Interaction’17 🐙

I was at Interaction17, NYC last month and I came back with a lot of inspiration and some concerns. Inspired because as expected out of any global design conference in 2017 this one too was buzzing with bots, data, realities, ethics, social impact, mindfulness and lot more.

Slightly concerned because the much anticipated wave of connected environments, sophisticated & intelligent machines, mixed realities is almost here and designers need lot more rigorous experimentation to be prepared for these new frontiers.

Next wave of many realities

Design has always attempted to lose itself. It constantly aspires to make it’s users immerse in an interface to make it feel as natural as possible. Virtual reality and augmented reality are all transiting out from laboratories to let us do that better. These new realities were much talked about in the conference. 

Brenda Laurel interestingly pointed out that we will be soon dealing with so many of them that the actual one should be termed ‘Reality Prime’. She emphasized on how in VR, ‘Principle of action’ needs to be at the core supported by 4 key Heuristics — support rich environments, reveal context in characters, plant cues & surprises and support emergent goals. While there were talks focusing on experiments in Cinematic VR (by Gary Hustwit) & AR/VR Prototyping (by Artefact) but were there compelling stories showcased built on these mysterious mediums? Not many.

Time for designers to get a stronger grasp of newer paradigms like semantics of space, non-linear narratives and tangible interactions is here. Are we ready?

Finding the sweet spot between intent and capability is key. I liked how Christian Ervin from Tellart put that designers always need to keep one eye on the horizon. His notes from applied futures were based on projects that sit in the ‘goldilocks zone’ like this shiny but thoughtful museum of future.

The good news is that, many designers have started getting their hands dirty in this space beyond the most loved labs of gaming. One smart concept is Peer an education experience on mixed reality platform by Moment design that uses a combination of physical and digital elements to engage students by making abstract concepts and complex forces visible and tangible. Social creation is one form of engagement that I think is the next common thing.

How much of our today’s UX toolkits will come handy in designing for connected hardware? Have we started rethinking about iterations & user testing & privacy there?

Ethical & Emotional intelligence in tomorrow’s Design

There has been debate about artificial intelligence from the start between it’s utopian and dystopian visions, between the hope of a better, technologically advanced world and the fear of disempowerment. And right at the thick center of it lies design’s responsibility. Cennydd Bowles initiated this much needed dialogue because we are already witnessing “embarrassing blunders — racist chatbots, manipulative research, privacy violations — that undermine trust and harm those we should help. This is a dangerous trajectory.”

His simple checkpoints are great filters to back any design decision — What if everyone did what I am about to do? Am I treating people as ends or means?

Accessibility & Diversity are other ethical filters which I feel is often missed in Indian Design Practice. Most Indian mobile apps are still inaccessible to disabled.

Thomas Wendt very boldly challenged the notion of centricity in Human Centered Design and how that potentially leads to status quo capitalist design & un-sustainability. He used a brilliant example of Dash buttons to show how modern industrial capitalism forces humans (read consumers) to keep living an anti-ecological life.

“It tends to treat the “home” as a source of material to convert into capital.” And that’s not empathy. That is deception. He is writing more about it in his upcoming book Persistent Fools.

Another interesting aspect of ethical intelligence emerged in Liza Kindred’s talk on Mindful Technology. With mindfulness comes along emotional intelligence on which Pamela Pavliscak is an expert. She is the founder of Sounding box — a platform for testing and monitoring the cognitive, behavioral and emotional strength of an online experience. I think we need many more thinkers like her to kill the whole conflict between technology & emotion.

With technology becoming matured enough to handle its design hygiene, it is the emotional quotient that designers will master. A very simple yet powerful thought from her brilliant deck shows how focusing on ‘aspirations & hopes’ of your users rather than ‘doing & thinking’ shifts the whole view to ‘becoming’ rather than just ‘interacting’.

Tomorrow’s design world might get a tad mechanical if we don’t have more thinkers like Brendan Dawes, a designer & artist whose work amplifies humanity with ‘lovely little inconveniences’. His uplifting talk was on one of my personal favorite areas of happily blending analog and digital.

This was a very gentle reminder of how we often miss out good-old nuances of humanity on getting caught in pixels & feature wars in our traditional design processes.

He used a witty metaphor of the humble pencil that has a great UI — there’s “new,” “undo,” and a built-in progress bar in it. (and that got it’s deserved twitter fame). Check out how his Plastic Player celebrates the good old ritual of physically flicking through records of music in this video.

Are you prepared for the next frontiers of design?