Went to a brilliant event last night - This Happened. Short talks about interesting Intereaction Design stuff presented with a refreshing openness you don't get in marketing and adland, where case studies are normally presented as inevitable and insightful marches to success. A lot of this seems to be an explicit aim of the organisers. The speaker guidelines include:
"We want to know how a project has evolved - the process. You should tell us the story, not just the result...We also like failed projects, a polished end result is not as important as the process. What did you learn from the project that you didn't know before?"
I'd love to hear more about failed projects. That could be a good idea for a conference, a day of failed projects. And not the sort of failures that somehow make you look, but out and out failures. Anyway. Tangent. Sorry. The splendid thing was that, although there was much talk of failure and side-roads and things that didn't work, everything talked about was very good.
Jussi's project illustrated the dangers of not being allowed to get your hands dirty yourself but is ending up as a rather beautiful thing. Jack was clever and funny about Olinda, and Kenichi's (and Chris') Animal Superpowers project managed to be brilliantly thoughtful and childish at the same time. But the really eye-opening thing was the Snug and Outdoor Snugkit. Partly because it was physical interaction design, no screens and batteries and Processing. Partly because we've been thinking about playgrounds a bit at home. But mostly because Snug seems to be a product of 20 years of thinking and studying and trying, and that seems to be the really valuable lesson; ideas are easy. Making them happen is hard. But worth it.
Yes failed projects would be great. I remember at PSFK last summer that Jeremy Ettinghausen mentioned in his talk that he would only be focussing on things that had worked. This caused me to remark to John Grant sat next to me that i would like people to talk about their less successful ventures and why they failed - his response was that you'd need longer slots than were allocated that day, so I'm sure you could fill a programme with ease.
Posted by: John | March 05, 2008 at 08:50 PM
This PLAY+SOFT stuff is brilliant. But frightfully expensive.
http://www.studiouk.net/index.php?id=74
Posted by: Ben | March 06, 2008 at 12:17 AM