Interaction Leadership: Expand Your Sphere of Influence

Confessions of a Public Speaker

If you ever wonder why your wonderful ideas rarely get accepted or are compromised beyond recognition in meeting after meeting, it might not be your creative design talents that are the problem.  It could be your ability to frame, shape, and pitch your ideas effectively to others.

This fun, brutally honest talk, loosely based on the O’Reilly book Confessions of a Public Speaker, will give you everything you need to know to present, pitch, and sell your ideas so your world domination plans can begin.

In addition to the CHIFOO event, Scott Berkun will be making the following public appearances: January 6, 9am - The AM Northwest television show on KATU Channel 2 He will also be in the Primetime show, which airs at 7pm on Channel 2.2 (without cable), Channel 302 if you have Comcast cable, or 464 on Verizon FIOS. (First Thursday!) January 7, 7pm. Powell’s Technical Books, 33 NW Park - Book Signing for “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” This is a free event.

Mobile Agency Life: Leadership in a Quickly Shifting Landscape

The release of the iPhone 3G and, with it, Apple’s launch of the App Store marked 2008 as the year that mobile computing changed forever.  We are witnessing the birth of a new class of technology:  pocket-sized devices with always-on broadband that understand who you are and where you are.  With a technological and cultural revolution unfolding before our eyes, how do interaction designers and agencies deal with such a quickly shifting landscape?  What does leadership mean when there is a perceived lack of solid research, UI best practices, and industry mentors at your fingertips?  James will bring some clarity to this area, reflecting on her experiences designing successful interactions for a variety of devices.

Good to Great Research: Breaking Away from the Formula

Whether they sponsor research or conduct it themselves, people want simple, repeatable steps that produce consistent, predictable outcomes.  When it comes to the qualitative research that is key to your design and development process, is your approach good or great?  Does it even matter?

Here’s the good news:  research can be done according to a formula and produce pretty good results, maybe even good enough for 60–80 percent of situations.  But formula research will never produce great results.  It won’t break through or innovate.  It will never result in leadership—market, industry, or otherwise.  If you really want to move beyond the pack, you have to depart from the world of formula research.

Lessons from the Meta-Craft

In any field of design, designers can enhance their craft by studying the work of others.  Through the careful exercise of breaking down real-world solutions into their underlying principles and patterns, previous lessons can be applied to new sets of problems we encounter.  Designing for web interfaces is no different.  By necessity we are constantly searching for inspiration and practical guidance in solving the problems we face as designers each day.  One approach is to look at other fields of study and extract the essence of the meta-craft at play in each space.

In this talk, Bill will look at the meta-craft of fields of study as diverse as magic, game design, storytelling, Shaker furniture, motion graphics, comics, and other areas for inspiration in designing rich, interactive interfaces.  By teasing out some of the key takeaways from each of these disciplines, a fresh light can be shed on our own corner of the design universe

Explicit Values for Better Design Research

Designers are now paying more attention to users, but is that enough?  The most widely accepted purpose of design research is to inform the work of design, or to provide a basis from which the work of design, development, and strategy can proceed.  But what we need from research is more than description and more than a list of “needs,” explicit or implicit, met or unmet.  We need a way to clearly articulate the values that inform our decisions, and a basis on which to do so.

In his presentation, Rick will show how to move beyond a mere scan of current conditions and look at ways research can better inform the design process.  He will also discuss how design research can be improved by establishing a more solid value system from which design researchers can operate.

Traversing Power Structures

To design interactions predicated on politics and power, you must commit to writing a narrative of human behavior mediated through time and space.  While great strides have been made over the last 40 years drawing on a rich history of cybernetics and human-computer interaction, existing models of interaction are limited in their ability to explain social and psychological phenomena in physical space, let alone online spaces, which are becoming increasingly common for mediating collective and collaborative group interactions in the workplace.

In an attempt to overcome the limitations of these models, interaction designers often like to talk about context.  But these conversations often fail to address other rich attributes important to models of social encounters.  Join Will as he explores the roles of context, perception, posture, situation, and framing, and discusses how people in workgroups traverse power structures and negotiate a shared language.  This exploration will lead to a better understanding of how leadership within a team, ad hoc group, or company might be modeled, both in physical and mediated online spaces.  He will then propose a framework for interaction designers to develop better strategies of influence and leadership within these contexts.

Skill Building for Design Innovators

How can you broaden your sphere of influence within the field of human-computer interaction?  You can start by building your muscles!  Steve will take a look at some fundamental skills that underlie the creation and launch of innovative goods and services. He will discuss the personal skills that he considers to be “the muscles of innovators” and the ways you can build these important muscles, including noticing, understanding cultural context, maintaining exposure to pop culture, synthesizing, drawing, wordsmithing, listening, and prototyping. Along the way, he will demonstrate how improving these powerful skills will equip you to lead positive change.

Designing into the Path of Disruptive Technology

  It is a modern axiom that disruptive technology sweeps through every market.  These are the so-called “paradigm-shifting” technologies that obsolete the existing offerings, markets, and technologies sustaining them.  Designers are often forced to choose between solutions that are right for today and those that pave the way for tomorrow.  What happens when designers get ahead of the curve?  What does it take to stand behind a vision of the future that the market isn’t ready for?  And how can design professionals empower business leaders to drive towards the horizon?  Eric will explore how to add momentum and legitimacy to progressive design ideas.

Pulling Off the Mask

The trap is so easy to fall into:  as we rise in leadership, we believe we have to play a role, stand apart, not show fear, adopt a formal tone.  But the essence of formality is separation, a mid-career game that just creates stress.  The young know it’s a game.  The old put the game behind them.  So how can you avoid it?

Bill will explore successes and failures in how informality can create real connection, whether it’s with employees, with products, with customers, or simply with each other—because leading means pulling people toward you, not pushing them away.

Design Thinking for a Better World

Design thinking makes information and products better.  But why stop there?  Often, we address only the symptoms of society’s big problems.  Design thinking helps us see why problems happen, so we can create lasting solutions.  This talk will wake you up, inspire action, and give you blueprints for saving the world.

As leaders and thinkers in the world, we need to utilize the skill and expertise we have developed to reach beyond our profession to effect change on a broader scale.  When asked, “What are the boundaries of design?”, Charles Eames replied, “What are the boundaries of problems?”  We’ve reached a critical juncture in history—a point where it appears the wheels are falling off the cart, coupled with a newfound appreciation of design thinking, adductive reasoning, and lateral thinking.  As people leading this charge of thoughtful problem solving to make better products, interactions, and services, it’s time to lead the charge on solving problems beyond selling more products.