Interaction 16: 2.–4. March, Helsinki Finland from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.
Teaser video. Definitively play with sound!
What a few weeks! I’m just back from a trip to San Francisco where I was invited for an absolutely awesome occasion: To announce that Interaction 16 will come to Helsinki.
Interaction, as you’ll very likely know, is the annual conference of IxDA, the global interaction designer association. In other words, the one big get-together where the global IX/UX designer community meets and discusses the state of the art – and the future – of interaction design. It’s a big deal, too – we’re talking about 1000 participants from around the globe!
I’m both honored and delighted to be co-chairing Interaction 16 with Sami Niemelä, co-founder of Nordkapp and one of the local leaders of IxDA Helsinki.
To quote the official announcement:
Interaction is the annual interaction design conference built around a global community.
“Form must have a content, and that content must be linked with nature.” Extend this to human experience, and Alvar Aalto’s famous saying perfectly describes the ethos of interaction design in 2016 and beyond.
The craft of design is in an exciting place right now. Designers have finally earned their seat in the corner office, but at the same time the dynamic within the industry is changing rapidly and constantly. Modern computing is taking design to places which we didn’t dare to dream about before, and is entering new, exciting fields such as robotics and nanotechnology.
The big question we intend to raise is what’s next in design, for professionals, consultants, studios and enterprises alike. The futures of interaction design, and design practice as a whole. To provoke, inspire and accommodate this theme, we’ve prepared, together with established Finnish filmmakers, a short film about the role of craft in the modern society.
Different perspectives
I’m super happy to be part of this family/community/team, and to contribute my perspective – after all, as the only non-designer on the team, I’m coming in from a slightly different angle and background. Where Sami take the designer’s perspective, I’ll be working from an emerging tech perspective. We have all the reason to believe that this way we should complement each other nicely.
Of course interaction design isn’t entirely a new field for me, either. It’s practically one of the circles of the Venn diagram that describes my work.
So between the two of us, and the team, and the larger community, we’ll try to explore on what’s next in interaction design, both on-screen and beyond.
Some more details over on the official announcement as well as the the conference site, interaction16.ixda.org
