Last week marked the end of the Interaction Design Association’s (IxDA) flagship event, Interaction10, in Savannah Georgia, concluding what was an unforgettable string of events, meetings, discussions, and laughs that could prove significant for years to come.
I was honored to be invited to the conference to conduct a spin-off of my UX Show and Tell workshops. The audience participation proved once again what I’ve been seeing across the country and into Toronto and London: that there really is a pent-up demand for user experience designers, interaction designers, information architects, and others to pull back the curtain from their work and share the goods or ask for help.
But as my session didn’t occur until Sunday, I had plenty of time to catch up with old friends from DC, my recent colleagues in Philadelphia and New York, and to finally meet a number of people with whom I had either communicated but never met or simply didn’t know until our time together.
Though I took away a lot of important insight in the sessions and keynotes, my real appreciation of the time lies in the moments spent forging new relationships or re-galvanizing existing ones.
My personal highlight of the conference occurred Saturday morning, when my friend Jeff Parks asked if I could sit in on a low-key discussion about design research with a few other folks. It wasn’t until a few moments before the UX Workshop’s video cameras went live did I realize I’d be having such a discussion sitting next to Indi Young, Eric Reiss, Daniel Szuc, Steve Baty, and of course Jeff himself.
Our conversation (which will be posted to www.theuxworkshop.tv thanks to sponsorship by New Hampshire-based Mad*Pow) spanned numerous topics involving design research, such as knowing what to investigate and how to dig deep enough, convincing clients when you need more research or perhaps even less, and much more.
Not only was the discussion itself valuable, it also granted me the opportunity to finally meet some of that Mad*Pow team, including Amy Cueva and Megan Grocki. I had been aware of their stellar work for some time but had never crossed paths with any of their team in person.
My workshop was a success despite a curveball at the last second: though we were planning on a discussion-style format, we couldn’t get the room converted from a presentation-model layout to round-table in time, and because lunch required the round-tables we’d have about 45 minutes for Show and Tell (usually the workshops are about 2 hours or more).
Will Evans quickly volunteered to kick off the Show and Tell by discussing some of the deliverables originally appearing in his “Right Way to Wireframe” workshop held on Thursday of that week. Will’s work process quickly captivated the audience and also showed the crowd that discussing your work doesn’t have to be all that painful.
Other presentations followed, ranging from people looking for help with their design approach, to other folks who wanted to walk through prototypes of their work to get feedback.
I’ll be the first to admit there were some unique challenges to the Show and Tell, but fortunately with a bit of adjustments I’m convinced such a workshop has an important role in an international conference attended by practitioners of varying levels of experience and expertise.
Looking ahead, I want to continue to build the UX Show and Tell brand with more of the connections I established in Savannah, and I’m sure the natural partnership with the IxDA will provide such a fertile foundation for growth.
Professionally, I can’t wait to engage with this crew in the immediate future and beyond, in any capacity, be it on project work, over a few drinks socially, or again on the conference circuit.
