Idea Conference: Recap 1

by KEVIN SILVER :: NOV 1, 2006 :: COMMENTS (0)

Last week I attended the Idea Conference 2006 in Seattle, at the main branch of the Seattle Public Library. The conference was sponsored by the IA Institute and was the brainchild of Peter Merholz. During his introduction to the conference Peter stated that the impetus for the conference was the convergence of the physical and virtual spaces as witnessed in the Maya redesign of the Carnegie Library System and a project Peter worked on for a large bank, in which they advocated a holistic approach that addressed all channels of customer communication, not just the web site. For the conference, Peter put together a group of speakers who could address designing complex information spaces in the physical and virtual worlds.

Linda Stone opened the conference with a talk on continuous partial attention, her theory on how we operate in an always connected noisy world. We have moved beyond multi-tasking, which is motivated by being productive, to something far more stressful. Linda stated that we have a desire to connect and stay connected and that for us to always be busy and connected is akin to being alive and recognized. Simply, we do not want to miss out on anything creating an artificial sense of crisis. Linda did not qualify continuous partial attention, it is neither good nor bad, it’s an adapted behavior. She gave numerous examples, that boiled down to this: we pay attention to many things at once (tv, laptop, phone, etc...) but never pay full attention to one thing at a time. But, Linda thinks we’re moving away from an “always on” connected world towards discernment. We’re looking for ways to filter out the noise and find meaningful connections instead of making as many connections as possible, we’re looking for quality and added value -- scanning vs discerning -- what really matters. We are entering the realm of the creator culture driven by the desire of exhilaration. We are increasingly focused on how to improve our quality of life, which is the new mantra. To rise above the noise and stand out products must and have move beyond offering features and ease-of-use to improving quality of life. We live in a time in which great design is valued. Linda closed her talk by telling us to design like we give a damn and move above the noise.

Over my next few posts I’ll write about the rest of the presentations, concluding with my thoughts...

You can find mp3's and the slides of the presentations here

tags: IDEA CONFERENCE

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