Potsdam
I really liked the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign conference a lot, mostly because the selection of speakers and their order (as excellently planned by Boris Müller), revealed various interesting things about the state of technology-related design.
What probably struck me the most, was the fact that one could roughly divide the lectures into two categories by how they dealt with complexity and simplicity. One group (usually the more business-oriented one) regard their products’ users as consumers with one primary need and a somewhat limited individuality. Someone who wants to buy a flight and likes some extra information or someone who is young, female and into fashion and celebrities.
Catering for those simple needs however, is being presented as an incredibly complex and almost impossible task to do, only to be accomplished by an army of professionals which are able to spin a cross-media web around the yearning customer. A notion which peaked in Mike Richter’s pathetic Don’t try this at home-statement. To emphasize on this, many presentations also featured some kind of diagram which would be presented with this we can’t really go into this right now but this is highly sophisticated, you know (and we’re worth your money, client)-attitude.
The other group also had points about this, but in their view as it seemed, the roles of designs and their users were just the other way around. Here, the individual is being presented as a highly complex and often even troubled human being with a life who has a need for simple designs to take some cognitive load off his or her shoulders. Anthony Dunne made some very good points about complicated needs, Bill Moggridge as well and Dennis & Patrick too. Maybe Bruce Sterling in his lecture-performance put it the most clearly with his hilarious juxtaposition of the iBrush (”Now on the wall, it’s Jobs himself!”) and the smart things which know that they haven’t been used in a year and can be asked to sell themselves on eBay to make their owner’s life a bit less complex and put a little more cash on his bank-account.
Of course this also resonates with John Maeda’s ideas about Simplicity in technology, but apart from the question of how to design, I was astonished by how different the weltbild of those designers was – particularly in their regard for users/consumers.
Also see our coverage on WMMNA.