i'm an interaction designer

It's always tricky when someone asks me what I do. Interaction Design to me is just a way of thinking. 

It is about creating intentional experiences that are sympathetic to human behaviour and context.

 You could really just call it design, cause that's what design should be about it the first place.

party in the mouth

I'm not a fan of any bling on the body lol.
Take a look at these crazy LED smiles by Daito Manabe

read more here

Streaming change

Isn't it always technology that channels change? At any point in time some enabling technology brings about shifts in mass behaviour.

I see video as one such breakthrough technology. Sure the moving camera's been around since Lumière, and we've loved images in motion ever since.. but it’s the new level of access and exposure to video content that is incredibly game changing. Just like the printing press brought about a great leap in the amounts of information distributed, web video is making it possible to exchange huge quantities of information. But what's great with video is everything beyond 'information' that gets communicated. The facial expressions, the mood, the pace and the inherent engaging nature of the medium makes it so impactful.

Web video didn't just become a social phenomena overnight. Camera’s got cheaper and smaller and internet bandwidth got wider, redefining content consumption.

5 years since its launch, YouTube now has 24 hours of video uploaded every minute. With over 2 million viewers every day, this medium is massive. And I see patterns that arise from the culture of web video as something we need to aggregate into our designs.

Opening up:

Great things were always happening, but now everybody can know. Experts and enthusiasts are sharing their best, and happy to do so for free. It’s making sense to have an inclusive approach, sharing and learning from each other.

Speed:

Form follows content now. It’s not as important that the concept or story looks beautiful or ‘finished’, than it is to just make sure that it’s shared immediately. An age of hyper-connectivity and easy content creation means that if your story isn’t out there now, it’s probably too late.

Designing for individuals:

The reach of the medium is incredible, but ironically, most of the content is viewed by individuals most of the time; not in groups. It’s not like the television where the family sits together on a sofa or like the movie theatre where the behaviour is interestingly different. Information is being consumed individually on phones and computers. This has implications beyond designing for video consumption. We need to start designing interactions for individuals, allowing exploration based on their personal traits, finding relevant influencers and allowing convenient access. This also poses a challenge for content creators and designers to drive real world physical and digital collaboration between individuals.

Designing for multiple devices:

The phone, the computer, the gamestation, the music player, the television are not so quite different from each other anymore. More and more devices are going beyond single functions that their form inherently supports. Designs that don’t allow content to be accessed on multiple channels lose out on reach and the value that users are seeking.

In search of inspiration

Research in design is often seen as a hurdle - a step that slows down the rush of ideas that designers experience when they are presented with a problem.

I find that as soon as I recognize an opportunity or problem, probable solutions almost simultaneously arise in my head. As tempting as it is to have conviction in your ideas that spring from blue sky thinking, I cannot stress enough the depth of impact one's designs can have if they're truly rooted in insights.

I've been working with my teammates on identifying opportunities in the domain of education and learning environments. We're working towards encouraging collaboration and participatory learning through the use of technology. Having come a long way since the first exploration, we are currently fine tuning our proposed concept. But here are some quick notes I'd like to share about what I've learnt about design research through this project:

It's okay to start with nothing

We began with a blank canvas, not sure of the direction we were heading in, and more importantly, not knowing what we wanted to find out. The first big revelation was realising how little we knew about our subject of interest.

The activity map helped us identify points of relevance. We now knew what information to seek.

Asking isn't the best way of finding out:

I hate questionnaires. Surveys and quantitative questions surely help you get a look at the big picture, and understand behaviour and choices on a level of scale; but I'm not particularly crazy about surveys. They're important but not the only method to rely on. Asking usually results in superficial answers not revealing the reasons behind preferences. In fact, people often don’t open up in formal settings.

The same research questions can be addressed in more creative ways. Creating an environment of ease and trust can change the quality of answers.

Observation, shadowing, role playing, group discussions, media scans and interviews reap much more meaningful information that eventually inspire solutions.

We played spin the bottle in to make the kids feel comfortable and get answers at the same time.

Read between the lines:

Respondents don’t always mean what they say. It takes empathy and curiosity to interpret opinions shared by respondents. For example, a respondent may say 'I don’t like History'. What he may really mean is he doesn't enjoy memorising in school. It would be wrong to assume this correlation. What I encourage is further probing and using creative ways to find out they why’s behind what they share.

Obvious Insights:

Insights may seem obvious in hindsight, but experiencing them first hand really drives ideas. There’s nothing more inspiring than understanding context. There were countless times where just seeing the environment, observing the way people behave triggered ideas that we otherwise wouldn’t have thought of.