Creating People for Interfaces

11/01/10 • 13 min

Design by Fire Conference 2010

In 1986 Bill Buxton gave a unique perspective on the WIMP interface by anthropologically reconstructing the human from the computer with its hard- and software interface. This Homo WIMPi had "a well-developed eye, a long right arm, uniform-length fingers and a "low-fi" ear." Given the progression in interfaces in the last 25 years, the reconstructed human may need to change as well. In this hands-on, plenary workshop, we will try to reconstruct our users based on our new touch, gestural, speech and other natural user interfaces. Based on this reconstruction we will discuss what paying more attention to the body language implies for designing user interfaces that are easier to learn and use.

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Turning the Corporate Battleship with Design

Designing interfaces for digital products like the Apple iPhone or an interactive web application like Yahoo! Mail promises to be one of the hottest job design prospects for the next century. Nearly every product type we know about has gone or is going digital, from content rich websites like CNN.com to mobile task-based applications like Gowalla to products for the digital home like Netflix. But even when one has great ideas, or creates innovative design for their products, how does one get their company or clients to institute positive change through their work? In this session, Andrei Herasimchuk will divulge lessons learned from the trenches on how to get large, global corporations to make big changes through Design. What works, what doesn't and how to keep yourself inspired when tackling such large projects. In doing so, he aims to pass on key factors to success while inspiring designers everywhere to tackle the challenges that face them in the workplace, helping them to overcome the inevitable obstacles that will arise in their path.

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Information is Beautiful

The use of infographics, data visualisations and information design is a rising trend across many disciplines: science, design, journalism and web. In an age of high-speed living and info overload, visualized information has incredible potential to help us quickly understand, navigate and find meaning in a complex world. David will share his passion for this merging of design, information, text and story to unveil some of the interesting, unexpected and sometimes magical things that happen when you visualise data, knowledge and ideas.