Takeaways from Interaction 19: A Journey of Transformation
By: Scott Pitkin
Tags: Events, Conference, Design, UX, Interaction Design

A snowy Seattle was the setting for February’s Interaction 19 conference, with 1500 design professionals pouring into town to explore the future of interaction design in the shadow of the Space Needle and the Amazon Spheres. This year’s theme: Design in the Wild.

As an event sponsor, Salesforce had a prominent exhibitor booth, staffed by six leaders from our UX team. At the booth and in conference sessions, we had hundreds of great conversations about UX — covering everything from Salesforce work culture and the gnarly problems we get to solve to product design, research, UX engineering, and leadership. We talked with designers, developers, and managers from a wide range of companies, discussing how we develop and use personas in sales, services, marketing and other areas of our platform. Other attendees were excited to speak with us about the Lightning Design System, how they’ve used Salesforce in their companies, and of course the new Salesforce Tower. Genuine interest and curiosity flowed, leading to many rewarding exchanges.

The Salesforce UX booth at Interaction 19 was a great opportunity for conference attendees to learn more about the culture and work of our amazing team.

On the first day of the conference we could feel the buzz of excitement. The program was packed with speakers, panels, and conversations, and excitement mounted for Bill Buxton’s keynote. And the energy continued to flow throughout the three-day, multitrack conference.

A Strong Open

Opening remarks and early sessions set the tone for the journey ahead, with a focus on community, inclusion, and transformation. Speakers and presenters acknowledged and celebrated the global and growing IxD community. Each talk included speech-to-text translation projected below each screen, along with a sign language interpreter — evidence of a commitment to inclusiveness.

In addition to the conference theme, Design in the Wild, each day had a subtheme: Discipline in Flux, Millions of Experiments, and Reinvent Yourself. This structure combined an overall story arc with fresh perspectives and new directions for each day.

In the opening keynote speech, Bill Buxton — a pioneer in the field of HCI and a principal researcher at Microsoft — spoke of how we wrestle with technology ecosystems, social ecosystems, the rise of AI, and increasingly flowing and interconnected experiences. He introduced the term “ubeity” to describe meaning in place, and how we strive for the right thing at the right place at the right time — then called for more focus on flow and transition between places: “What if everything just worked seamlessly?” Buxton posited that “at some point everything we do must leave the safe environment where we create and go into the wild.” Whether that wild place is a conference room, a grocery store parking lot, or a truly wild (and unwired) place, our ability to seek meaning in place will lead us toward more positive outcomes.

Reinvention Is for Everyone

Change is a constant, especially in technology and design. The organizers acknowledged this and asserted that the global IxD community is facing some of the most challenging and complex work it has ever seen. Reinvention was a common theme for everyone from students to luminaries in the field. One of the youngest presenters, Shubham Banerjee, described how, at age 12, he used Legos to build an inexpensive Braille printer. Through curiosity and good questions he identified a problem and invented a creative solution — an experience that led him to awards and recognition and put him on a path of innovation for good. Now, at 17 and in his senior year of high school, Banerjee runs a venture-funded company called Braigo Labs.

In another session, esteemed designer and author Don Norman, told of his continued professional evolution and transformation. He called attention to the big, sociotechnical “real-world” problems we face in the 21st century. On witnessing, say, abnormally high cancer rates in Appalachia, “what is a designer to do?” That question has led Norman to engage with communities facing many such problems, facilitating connections and creativity in communities around the world. He advocated that designers see transformation as a move toward systems thinking, a focus on people and core issues, and a commitment to use communities, societal platforms, and networks to effect change.

Many talks introduced or expounded on skills needed for this disciplinary transformation, including collaboration, empathy, storytelling, ethics, and intentionality — the human skills that counterbalance the complexity of technology or prove critical in solving sociotechnical challenges.

Since the Space Needle was erected for the Seattle World’s Fair of 1962, the city has continued to transform itself into a hub of technology and creativity.

Hot Topics: Ethics and AI

Two topics, Ethics and AI, emerged, reemerged, and intertwined throughout the conference. Speakers explored them from multiple angles, from definitions and best practices to case studies and cautionary tales.

Several talks looked at how ethics apply to questions of data science, design decision making, and the domains in which we work. Google’s Elizabeth Churchill pointed out that there are no general AI ethics, just domain ethics, where a specific AI technique is applied in a specific context. Gabriel White spoke about a lack of tools that help designers determine what is “good” or “right,” in contrast to the abundance of tools used to determine what is usable, useful, or appealing. He went on to present a set of heuristics that enable ethical evaluation of design decisions. Molly Wright Steenson helped unpack the meaning of ethics for a design audience, and prompted us to consider ethics when framing problems or collecting and visualizing data. She also gave a shout-out to collaborator Kathy Baxter, Architect of Ethical AI Practice at Salesforce.

As with ethics, it was interesting to see how leaders in the field of interaction are thinking about AI. Starting with the underlying data, which we often take for granted, Churchill reminded us to stay alert for sources of bias in both our data and our interpretation. Joe Meersman of IBM spoke about the need for human involvement in AI training and maintenance, and endorsed designers as the human-centered advocates on an AI project team. Emily Sappington looked at how we evaluate AI experiences and gauge if they are smart or competent. She noted that responsiveness and first impressions are critical, and recommended that, before trying to dazzle users, product teams implement a few things well to establish trust — the crawl-walk-run model. For me, this approach resonated with the position of Trust as our top value at Salesforce; our customers are watching closely as we integrate AI across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform.

Other important themes on the AI track: the need for transparency and intentionality in AI solutions. Microsoft’s Arathi Sethumadhavan and Samuel J. Levulis spoke about transparency, advising designers to make the underpinnings and output of AI clear to users, and to set clear expectations, because AI can’t do everything. Sometimes only small changes in UI copywriting are all that’s needed to ensure proper expectations and not overpromise results.

Kristian Simsarian, of California College of the Arts, discussed how intentionality intersects with the ethics of AI. He maintained that learning machines need objectives, which must be carefully considered. He notes the increase of AI use cases getting shut down when the purpose is misguided. Ultimately, he asked the audience to participate in the strategy and have brave conservations around the intentions of AI.

Snow fell on Seattle during day 3 of the conference, causing some disruption to the proceedings.

Snow Time

On day 3, best-laid plans were interrupted by a snowstorm, making us all “designers in the wild” as both the conference and the city of Seattle shut down early. Some attendees left for the airport, but those of us who stayed enjoyed a rare treat — an unexpected wonderland of quiet city streets blanketed in snow.

Day 3 focused on “Reinvent Yourself” and, despite the storm, the day still provided great content and a good dose of inspiration. In the day’s keynote, John Maeda told a funny and very personal story of transformation, with thanks to the people in his life who empowered him and helped him recover from failure. Maeda also introduced his model of Makers and Talkers, describing the transformation many of us experience in our careers when we must do less making and more talking.

In a highly anticipated talk, Nelly Ben Hayoun addressed the topic “Designing the Impossible,” packing slides with ideas and images on the subjects of her work, reinvention, and using design to prompt action. She described using total bombardment and a hammer technique to move forward on ambitious goals, with the attitude “no is not an answer.” I came away feeling that anything is possible, reinvention is normal, and big challenges can be met with bold actions.

After three days, I was exhausted, but also energized and full of ideas, inspired by the abundant intensity and urgency. As a discipline, we’re facing some of the most exciting, challenging, and complex work yet. Interaction 19 prepared each of us, in our own ways, to embrace that transformation.