Categories: Events

Interaction14 Recap

Last week, three of us from the Mozilla design team attended Interaction14 (IxD14), an annual conference hosted by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) where industry professionals come together to share new ideas related to the practice of interaction design. This year the conference was hosted in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and the theme is “Languages of Interaction Design“.

There were 90 speakers, and more than 800 attendees joined 4 days of workshops, presentations and conversations about design. The topics range from traditional design process like designing design projects to fun topics like important design lessons learned from cat. Here I want to share with you some interesting talks I attended and my sketchnotes, just to give you an idea of what IxD14 is about.

Talks about sharing experiences

Many of the presentations at IxD14 were about sharing experiences. I particularly enjoyed the talk Bad Design Advice by Paolo Malabuyo who turned three bad advices designers often receive into good ones. I also enjoyed Jan van Geel‘s talk about how to sell your Ideas by better communicate with others.

Skechtnote for "Bad Design Advice"

Skechtnote of “Bad Design Advice”

Sketchnote for "Pitching Ideas"

Sketchnote of “Pitching Ideas”

Talks about design theory

In the very first keynote Languaging Reality, Dialog and Interaction, Klaus Krippendorf gave an overview of several theories of language and explained how language manifests reality in our daily lives. In the talk The De-Intellectuallizaiton of Design, Daniel Rosenberg differentiated enterprise UX vs. consumer UX, and identified the gap between design education and industry. In his talk Design for Dasein, Thomas Wendt examined philosophical origins of design principles and new models of practical implementation.

Sketchnote for "Languaging Reality"

Sketchnote of “Languaging Reality”

Sketchnote for "De-Intellectualization of Design "

Sketchnote of “De-Intellectualization of Design “

Talks about new design languages

There were many presentations about new design languages, new trends and challenges in the field of interaction design. Stephen Gay and Susan Hura gave a very informative talk on the opportunities and principles of designing Voice User Interface (VUI). Antonio De Pasquale talked about Designing Motion based on the famous 12 Principles of Animation by Disney. And Zak Brazen and Wyatt Starosta talked about what can we learn from the UI of Nature.

Sketchnote for "Adopting VUI in a GUI world"

Sketchnote of “Adopting VUI in a GUI world”

Sketchnote for "Design in Motion"

Sketchnote of “Design in Motion”

Talks about how we can work better together

On the topic of process and how designers can work better together, Chirs Noessel shared how Cooper uses Pair Design in their day to day work. Irene Au shared how Yoga and meditation help designers gain focus, empathy and creativity. There were also discussions of how Introvert and extrovert designers work together and how industrial designers and interaction designers can work better with each other.

Sketchnote of "Pair Design"

Sketchnote of “Pair Design”

Sketchnote for "Body Languages of Interaction Design"

Sketchnote of “Body Languages of Interaction Design”

There are definitely more interesting talks than I can include here, you can find the full list and a collection of videos of all the IxD14 presentations. Next year, Interaction15 will be hosted in San Francisco, I hope many more of us can make it and enjoy another 4 day of awesomeness.