Design by Fire 2011

1st November 2011

Hello World!

This is the place for my thoughts on Design and Research for Interaction.
From crazy ideas, to book reviews, conference comments and methodology notes, everything will fit here.
I will do my best to keep regular post, yet keeping it interesting and meaningful.

First lines are about the Design by Fire conference I attended a few weeks ago In Utrecht.
The first surprise the organization had for us  (besides the Church where it took place) was the “presentation mug”,
way more original than the standard name-tag which always remembers me to rehab-groups.
Besides, this mug offers a very friendly way to leave messages on colleagues’ desks when they are absent.

As higlights, I can remmember the very inspiring talk from Jamin Hegeman from Adaptive Path on service design,
Nynke Tromp‘s presentation on designing for social dilemas, and Didier Hilhorst‘s disertation about the potential
and peculiarities of mobile contexts.

Nynke’s presentation created a real debate throughout the day about the potential of design to change the world,
and the responsibility of designers. Both for the ones who believed in it, and the ones who don’t, it was good food for thought.

Didier’s talk about the Death of the Input box brought the importance of context to life, and how we should reset
our mind for the peculiarities of a mobile context. I liked his differentiation of mobile apps in
six categories: photo, location, social, speech, motion, and sound.

Jamin’s presentation on the approach of service design specially got the public’s attention (a similiar presentation can be found here).
He placed special attention on the differences and similarities between service design and interaction-user centered design
as for focusing on the user and aiming for a certain experience. I liked his design approach based on affordance,
feedback, behavior, and emotion.

Ultimately, he refered to the book Service Design Thinking, which is ready in my to-read list.

Summarizing, the combination of inspiring topics and speakers made the event really worthwhile.
Thumbs up for the organization, and hopefully see you next year.