Getting Together: Interaction 12, Day 2
This blog post is part of a series on Interaction 12 by SVA’s MFA in Interaction Design Despartment. The original post is can be found here.
Day 2 was a good day. I got up at 8:30AM, made some breakfast, then walked down to the Convention Center. During the 25 minute walk from our apartment, I got to wander and take in the sights and sounds of the Dublin morning commute. The River Liffey is spanned by many pedestrian bridges, each unique with interesting key features. The Ha’penny Bridge is one of my favorites.
I managed to make it to the opening key note, Exploring, sketching, and other designerly ways of working with Jonas Lowgren. The talk heavily echoed conversations we’ve had in many of our classes, most recently, Prototyping. One of the sketches he presented was the Mediated Body, a clever exploration in physical computing to encourage strangers to interact with each other. The piece consisted of 2 vests each connected to a pair of headphones. When the 2 people wearing the vests touched each other, they closed a circuit that produced a sound in the headphones. The more physical contact, the more intense the sound.
Dirk Knemeyer’s talk Understanding Us: The Next Frontier, is easily my pick of the conference so far. He spoke about the lack of relationship skills in our culture, and how strange this is since the important moments of our lives revolve around interactions with others. We’ve invested much in technological innovation over the last 500 years; we can fly around the world and transplant organs, but we still haven’t figured out how to help people have better relationships, express anger in productive ways, or even enjoy their jobs. Kneymeyer’s work revolves around finding ways to better understand how we relate to ourselves and each other, and translating that to better interaction design. He uses an applied empathy framework to step through different levels of human needs and desires. Current projects include a platform for sharing Meyers Briggs results amongst teams to help members better understand each other and work together.
After lunch, SVA IxD alum Katie Koch delivered an excellent presentation on Project:Interaction, entitled “People ARE Software: The Story of Project: Interaction”. This project, a curriculum for teaching interaction design to high school students, was created and taught twice with fellow alum, Carmen Dukes. Katie stepped us through the process they worked through with their students. Enter, an introductory discussion about design and interaction in every day life; Explore, a phase investigating people and working with a variety of materials; a Make/Test/Reflect loop, where students are encouraged to iterate through different ideas and give each other feedback on their progress; and finally Show off, where students get to present progress made throughout the class. It was inspiring to see how readily high school students respond to the communication techniques we often use, such as post it noting and body storming; and also great to see an alum doing so well back in the real world.
The day wrapped up with an SVA family dinner organized by faculty member Jill Nussbaum. The conference can be a little overwhelming at times, so it was great to spend the evening with a small group. The 10 of us gathered for a meal at The Church, a former synagogue, and reflected on the day over some great food and wine.
