The featured photo is a view of NYC from 28th floor of Bloomberg building where The Interaction16 Redux took place on Saturday, May 14th (yesterday).
The event had 4 talks selected from the recent IxDA international conference in Helsinki:
- Opening Keynote: Learning From Live Systems by Josh Seiden
- Invisible Cities by Pablo Honey
- Shallow Interaction Patterns for Deeper Human Experiences by Kieran Evans and Jes Koepfler
- Closing Keynote: Magical UX and the Internet of Things by Josh Clark
I enjoyed all talks. Josh Seiden talked about the blend of Service Design, Lean Startup, and Lean UX methods into “Learning From Live Systems” approach and about a mix of software and human “concierge” services. Pablo Honey talked about invisible cities and how user experience designers can enhance the physical and digital spaces that we live in. Kieran Evans and Jes Koepfler demonstrated 6 shallow patterns that they applied in Extreme Event, a social game that teaches players about disaster resilience.
The last talk was very entertaining. I liked it that Josh Clark used his magic wand to try to light candles and shared a lot of interesting thoughts of how technology can be magic.
Magical #UX & The Internet of Things by @bigmediumjosh at @IxDA_NYC #IxDA pic.twitter.com/BsTK1ei8Hb
— Sveta – Света (@svknyc) May 14, 2016
He also mentioned a product by Wayfindr, a non-profit organization that helps blind people navigate the world by using mobile devices. I am glad that Josh shared an example of a beneficial product that was actually used and tested by blind people and not an example of “smart” signing gloves that has been a hype lately (the product that failed due to no feedback from native signers which also upset many signing Deaf people).
Another thing I would like to note that as a deaf attendee I could follow presenters via verbatim live captioning. As an accessibility consultant, I provided customized advice to organizers on how to make their event accessible. I also used sign language interpreters to voice for me during Q&A and to communicate with people during breaks and networking part after presentations.
Captioning benefits everyone – not only myself, but also many other audience members. Also, hearing loss is very stigmatized and those who have it would not ask for captioning access or are not even aware of this additional option to better understand presentations. Majority of them don’t know or understand sign language to benefit from interpreters. That’s why I provide customized consulting and training to organizers on how to make their events accessible.
Do you want to learn more about how to make your events accessible? Do you want to hire me as one of your speakers for your events? Contact me!