Experience Matters

Random Thoughts From IDEA 2008

I recently had the opportunity to both speak at and attend IDEA 2008, a wonderful design conference which exceeded my expectations. There were many take-aways for me, but here’s a few random thoughts that I’d like to share:

Dave Gray
“we’re still in the age of scrolls on the internet”
Dave’s talk reminded us that technology changes while people change less significantly. Specifically he reminded us about the effectiveness and timelessness of the book design and why it’s still relevant today. I also learned a thing or two from Dave, you can see what they are here.

Andrew Hinton
“our brains need to fight it out”
Andrew gave a stimulating presentation about what it really means to be “here”—for example when were are multi-tasking, we are often in more places than one at the same time even though our bodies are fixed. But what stood out for me was the way he captured the struggle in our though process between Logic + Emotion. Spock = Logic and Captain Kirk = Emotion, cue the Star Trek music and it’s time for them to slug it out. Our brains do this in milliseconds all the time. Sometimes one wins over the other.

Aradhana Goel
“”we are moving to the collective”
Aradhana of IDEO gave a broad but very interesting take at some trends she is studying. Among them is the need to understand not only individual, but now group behaviors and cultural implications. Goel’s premise included insights around how clould computing and mobile devices are creating a new kind of “nomadic” lifestyle where we can plop down anywhere and feed off of other in somewhat of a “parasitic-like” fashion. It was a fascinating talk and to prove her point, I mooched off the available wi-fi and video streamed her entire talk through my laptop. You can see it here.

Jason Fried
“after there’s been enough talk I say, look—just go do something”
Fried of 37 Signals gave his well known Getting Real talk and while what’s real for 37 Signals may not be real for the rest of us, his points are well taken and though provoking. If you’ve reached a point in a meeting where no one is getting anywhere, do everyone a favor and leave the room to go do something. Make something tangible, stop talking about it and go off and do something.

Jesse James Garrett
“we had to look beyond wireframes”
Garrett of Adaptive Path gave a demonstration of his forward looking browser experience called “Aurora”. You can watch the videos of the concept here. The videos themselves illustrate multiple scenarios using narrative and characters to visualize the experience. In order to do this, Garrett’s team needed to think multi-dimensionally.

All of the presentations were very good, but these were just a few that stood out for me. I’d recommend checking out IDEA 2009 if it comes to your town.