IxDA Interaction 09: Day 3

My Twitter notes from Interaction 09 Day 3 — Sunday, February 8, 2009 — are below. I have gathered my tweets from Day 1 and Day 2 in other posts.

Keynote: How to Change Complicated Stuff (e.g., the World) by Marc Rettig

• I’m Twittering from the last day of @interaction09 http://interaction09.ixda.org/ thanks to @boxesandarrows http://boxesandarrows.com
• @mrettig is now giving this morning’s keynote entitled “How to change complicated stuff (e.g., the world)” http://is.gd/iPm7
• “The Great Turning” @mrettig says he’s proud to be alive in the time when we figure out how to truly create sustainability
• A shift in values, from “I” to “we”. A improvement in our quality of life. But “sustainability” is a mechanical, emotionless word
• Design is personal, intimate, sensitive. @mrettig wants to introduce us to the people that have inspired him
• @mrettig, trying to play audio in his presentation, says, “Um, how do I click something?” since he’s holding the remote. Laughter.
• Retweeting @mojoguzzi: @whitneyhess at work #ixd09 http://twitpic.com/1e3qb
• @mrettig doing research on sleep apnea devices. Showing a video of a woman talking about her cumbersome, annoying device
• Personal stories are not engineering metrics. “It’s about improving people’s lives with design solutions.”
• Design is intimate even when the product isn’t. @mrettig telling story of person who thinks their digital camera “is full”
• @mrettig re-titling his preso: “How to do a better job of changing the world” Make products better for people, not just suck less
• Inspire project groups in large companies whose products are used by large numbers of people and you’ll change the world — @mrettig
• Working to make a difference: team planning workshop > 2nd workshop > ethnographic research > product concept workshops >
• > concept validation in homes > new strategic intent
• It can be tough to talk to people about sensitive topics, and equally difficult to analyze the data. Use language that’s comfortable
• “Lesson: the work of change is *social*. Deliberately plan for ripple effects. Nurture their outward spread, by nurturing …
• …the people and relationships that are in any way involved in the change.” — @mrettig
• Program of change: begin together, map social web by which the work will be done. Immerse to understand what diff is worth making…
• …conceive and try possible ways to make that difference. Continue understanding and trying until the difference is made
• “Nurture the people and relationships, propagate the ripples of understanding and empathy” — @mrettig
• Immersion experiences are like juice in morning. Team wakes up, sees that theyre connected to the lives changed by each design choice
• “We often work at the wrong level in the system. And we often take a mechanistic view when an organic model is more true” — @mrettig
• “Relationships are more important than the things themselves. Want to identify oops to heal the system by creating boundary objects..
• … unblocking flow across relationships, making new relationships possible.”
• @mrettig‘s doodles when on the phone are revealing some insights, starting to think in terms of fields, “homes are animals”
• Households are organisms. Their own internal state, relationships. Sensing, reflection. Cycles, daily, yearly, longer
• @mrettig talking about a project researching the food distribution at Whole Foods attempting to reveal breakdowns in the process
• “A consequence of working for change: You can no longer be satisfied with shipping the product, launching the site, finishing…
• …the product. You must establish the change, put in place the necessary conditions for it to be come the new Normal.”
• @ebacon Ditto! I like when keynote speakers are also participants. Makes me feel warm and fuzzy
• Designs of the Time: http://dott07.com/ Community projects that explore how design can create sustainability in certain regions
• Eco-Designers Guild: http://www.ecodesignersguild.blogspot.com/
• There’s a lot going on, @mrettig collecting links on sustainability and design here: http://delicious.com/mrettig
• Chris Travis @truehomeguy http://tinyurl.com/a9snc2
• “In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.” — Dante
• @mrettig Phenomenal job!!

Session: Designing the Viral App by Christina Wodtke

• “It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure the product survives. Especially the designer’s” — @cwodtke
• B=f(P,E) Behavior is a function of both the person and the environment
• @cwodtke talking about Flickr’s photos defaulted to public. Great for viral, but downside: ppl who favorite all pix of little girls
• You have to give control to your users to protect their privacy, even if it dampers virality
• Social network = group of people subscribing to you. Suddenly you have a better reach. Twitter has asymmetric follow (non-reciprocal)
• “Find you friends” on Twitter or Facebook auto selects all contacts. Annoying when you invite accidentally, but powerful viral tool
• @cwodtke recommends Influence http://tinyurl.com/2qy9ux
• Targeted features for the most *useful* users. Power law of participation: http://tinyurl.com/ysnqy3
• @cwodtke giving props to @armano for his Tipping Point graphic: http://tinyurl.com/c3l8dr
• LinkedIn gives group managers a lot of functionality even though they’re a small minority of their user types. They’re most valuable
• Unless you’re Yahoo, you probably need to think about getting traffic to your site. Outreach is key. Get your users to link to you
• Share links on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc. Choose the sites wisely based on what your users actually use
• A giant wall of bookmark lists is a turn off, creates friction. Just a few will call out to those who use those services. Pagerank!
• @cwodtke‘s viral checklist: frictionless, impactful, targeted, outreach. Use it when you’re doing your wireframes
• Reach @cwodtke on LinkedIn (duh) at http://linkedin.com/in/christinawodtke
• @cwodtke gave me some good ideas for @boxee. Gonna have to rethink a few of the social features

Session: Lo-Fi: Sketchbook Techniques for Interaction Designers by Tim Wood

• I’m Twittering from Tim Wood’s “Lo-Fi: Sketchbook Techniques for Interaction Designers” http://is.gd/iQxw
• Tim reminds us that while sketching is the talk of the town these days, it’s been around as a communication tool for 1000s of years.
• Tim Wood cites Da Vinci — having related drawings all on the same page, several iterations, easy to access later
• Resolve in steps. Resolve as needed. Redraw. Overdraw.
• Synthesis isn’t necessarily in terms of visuals that you put on the page but also about the observations you make, fusions that occur
• Tim prefers to sketch in ink, likes the weight on the paper, impossible to erase. Leave ugly drawings and build on them
• Notate. TIm showing Da Vinci’s detailed notes. Documentation helps build up the *body of knowledge*
• Cut and paste. Sometimes you’re away from your tools. Back-of-the-napkin sketches can be reintegrated back into the notebook
• “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” — da Vinci. Tim keeps all of his sketches, pastes them up and surrounds himself with them
• At the end of a project, go back to your sketches and look at your thought process. See where the insights happened, find new ones

Got caught up in a great conversation with friends so I unfortunately didn’t make it to Kim Goodwin’s closing keynote.

Related Posts:

• IxDA Interaction 09: Day 1 February 17, 2009 | 3 comments
• IxDA Interaction 09: Day 2 February 17, 2009 | 4 comments
• The Excellence better known as Interaction10 #ixd10 February 8, 2010 | 7 comments
• My Interaction 09 recap on Boxes and Arrows May 4, 2009 | 0 comments
• Video of Dan Saffer’s talk “Tap is the New Click” at IxDA NYC January 9, 2009 | 1 comments