Last weekend I was invited to attend the Interaction ‘09 Conference hosted by IxDA in Vancouver. I must admit that until recently I had never even heard of the Interaction Design Association (IxDA), and didn’t know much about them at all.
Turns out IxDA is only in its fifth year, free for all to join, self-governed, highly organic and member-driven, and boasts over 5000 members worldwide. Interaction ‘09 was only the second conference they’ve hosted, with nearly 500 people attending from 19 different countries. Hosted primarily in The Four Seasons Hotel, it felt like a very nice size compared to other conferences I’ve attended, although only about 10% of the attendees were from Vancouver.
The IxDA website lists their mission as evangelism, innovation, professionalism, education, and community building—tenets they could vary well have lifted directly off the GDC website. The IxDA Statement of Value and Purpose is as follows: “We believe that the human condition is increasingly challenged by poor experiences. IxDA intends to improve the human condition by advancing the discipline of Interaction Design. To do this, we foster a community of people that choose to come together to support this intention. IxDA relies on individual initiative, contribution, sharing and self-organization as the primary means for us to achieve our goals.”
At a costs of $699USD for three days of presentations and social events, plus individual costs for various workshops held two days prior to the speakers, it was a terrific bargain for those who attended. The speakers were almost universally revered experts in the Interaction Design field from around the worls. Keynote speakers included Robert Fabricant, Kim Goodwin, Fiona Raby, Marc Rettig, John Thackara, Jared Spool, and Dan Saffer—who’s inspiring presentation could literally be inserted into a communication design conference such as the upcoming Vancouver Design Week in 2010 almost as is. There were no local keynote presenters and only two local speakers who did rapid fire sessions.
An interesting aspect of this conference was the absence of any theme. The conference Chair, Greg Petroff, told me they decided instead to allow the topics and any themes to emerge organically from the voices of their membership. Curiously, a theme emerged anyway, with the state of the global economy, environment crisis, and state of their industry becoming a common thread running between each presentation. It started a little doom and gloom and ended on a very positive high note with everyone leaving inspired and motivated to make change via their own design practice.
As the majority of their members are skilled web designers, their use of online tools was impressive to say the least. They used a Crowdvine social networking site prior to the conference to connect members and host a forum where they encouraged people to discuss issues important to them and let the speakers to decide what they wanted to present. During the conference they encouraged microblogging via Twitter using their “hashtag” #IXD09 to identify posts relating to the conference. And they constantly pumped “Tweets” and images from Flickr on projected screens whenever a speaker wasn’t on stage. And they plan to post all the speakers presentations online like TED does in a couple weeks so they can propagate and spread the message beyond the walls of the conference. These may seem like simple things to do in these days of social networking and online marketing, but it added up to create a powerful online force, extending the reach of their conference.
The conference was structured with keynotes starting each day in the morning, followed by rapid-fire sessions on a variety of design-related topics during the late morning and afternoon. They allowed plenty of time between presentations for a stretch and some mingling, but kept many of the sessions to 20 minutes. This forced presenters to pare down their presentations and quickly move through materials, with a Q&A session at the end. Many (myself included) liked this succinct format, but not every presenter was adept at working efficiently within these parameters and it meant hustling to the next presentation at times. Each day was concluded by a keynote which brought everyone together before the dinner breaks and social events at night. With workshops over two weekdays and the three day conference starting on Friday, it made for a long weekend, making going back to work on Monday a bit of a chore.
The conference included the ubiquitous trade show area with sponsors setting up displays and product demonstrations, but I was impressed by how little “swag” there was in the conference bags or given out. The bags were recycled and easily repurposed, and even the pens they handed out were recycled. Nice touch.
Speaking of sponsors, their event sponsors were rather amazing. Especially the way Adobe stepped up as their Diamond Sponsor and various design schools supported them. In fact, it was amazing how SFU’s Creative Intelligence Laboratory (a department within the Business Faculty) provided planning support as well as an army of students—an example of very impressive local support.
Hoping there might by some synergies between our groups, I sat down with the conference chair (and my kind host) Greg to discuss any opportunities to collaborate or gain wisdom from their recent experiences and potentially and tap into their networks. He explained that the entire conference was produced by their volunteer committee of about 15 people located in various geographical locations using Basecamp to communicate and plan the conference in a central manner at very little expense.
After a few days at the conference, I realized a couple things: Many of us practice Interaction Design and I want to learn more about the science, strategy and design thinking behind it; And that this humble conference was one of the best I’ve been to—a fine example of the type of professional discourse so badly needed in Vancouver and Canada. Certainly something to strive for as a goal as we plan the upcoming Vancouver Design Week Conference for 2010.
Curious side note: Apparently the title “Interaction Designer” is a contentious one, with moans and jeers from the audience when it arouse a number of times as many in attendance prefer titles like “Interface Designer” and “Information Architect” or terms like “User-Experience Design” and “User-Centered Design”. Sound familiar? In the end, the closing keynote speaker gave an impassioned plea to all to set aside their differences and cease bickering about titles, focussing instead on the work at hand and challenges ahead. Good advice indeed.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Regarding your closing paragraph, I remember the last keynote speaker saying that, as long as we’re arguing over turf and titles, there’s a large circle around all of us that developers label as “irrelevant”. Yeow!
March 27th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Hey Mark,
Thanks for the great write-up. FYI on what we call ourselves..its one of the reasons IXDA is the Interaction Design Association and not the Interaction Designer’s Association. It’s a subtle distinction but important. The group is about people who want to share what we do. Personally I don’t care what people call themselves.