Didn’t get to go to Interaction15?
Wouldn’t even if you didn’t know about it because you’re not an interaction designer?
Never fear! here are my favorite talks in a nutshell (and why). I will preface with telling you that there were usually three talks going at a time and so I certainly didn’t attended all of them, but I still really liked the ones I ended up at. They’re each about an hour long.
Mike Monteiro: Keynote from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
This is a great talk for any creative to learn how to talk about themselves and Monteiro is a super engaging lecturer. He’s talking about how important it is to be able to see your work with conviction and why you need to. Something that a lot of people working in creative industries struggle with.
Matt Jones: Jumping to the End — Practical Design Fiction from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Another great lecture, maybe focused towards designers. Jones talks about the how the detailed worlds created in science fiction worlds are the kind of things that designers should think about when they’re working. What kind of world are we designing for? How will one thing we’re doing affect another? He made the point that writers are the fastest designers and I kind of love holding that idea in my head (and my heart). Not just high-level thought, but in great detail. Think space toilets.
Kara Swisher: Keynote from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Swisher is actually a technology writer and she was discussing the trends she’s noticed and engaged in a discussion of them. But she’s also super entertaining and funny. So if you wanted to know about about tech trends, he’s an entertaining opportunity to do so.
Bill DeRouchey: Don’t Have a UX Career from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
DeRouchey talks about how fragile the role of UX really easy because of our rapidly changing technology landscape. Actually, not just technology but our cultural values and social dynamics in general. He leads the audience through fun and funny thought exercises challenging us to extract what about being a UX professional today is transferable to whatever the circumstances are of the future (hint: it’s not designing interfaces).
Ayah Bdeir: Keynote from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Bdeir was a keynote speaker really talking about her journey to find her current company, LittleBits. And, althought it was relatively product-focused talk, it was still really great and I think everyone got a professional crush on her. She’s very passionate about bringing technology out of the hands of experts and into the hands of people to experiment and make the niche things that fit your needs that couldn’t be mass produced. It made me daydream about crazy things I can make once I get settled in my new location.
Bonus! There were a lot of great talks and of course I didn’t include them all, so feel free to explore the complete Interaction15 lectures on vimeo if I piqued your fancy. Some of the others that I liked that didn’t make the top list were…
- Danielle Malik: Go Home, Data, You’re Drunk. Excellent talk about the limitations of data and data-driven design. It was so great to get this other side of the story. I actually didn’t see this one in person but heard so many good thing about it that I watched it when it came out.
- Tim Brown in conversation with Allan Chochinov: Keynote (this super specific to the design profession and I can imagine super boring to anyone outside of it. The point that made everyone happy was: “As designers, we are so privileged that our problems are to solve other people’s problems”)
- Panthea Lee: Design in Challenging Governance Context Lee works for a social impact consultancy called Reboot that does incredible working on systemic level problems.