A few weeks ago I attended my second HopScotch Design Fest in downtown Raleigh. Overall the conference was superb – almost every session I attended was interesting, inspiring, and valuable. Compared to last year, the format this time around was centered around themed groups of speakers and shorter presentations followed by a panel discussion. I was especially impressed with two of these sessions.
Design for Storytelling
Daniel Horovitz talked about how he’d reached a point in his career where he was tired of doing design work with computers. He decided to challenge himself and create at least one new piece of art every day using analog techniques (collage, drawing, etc). He began sharing his work online which lead to increased exposure and a desire from clients to create new projects in the new style he’d developed, instead of the computer-based design work that he’d spent most of his career working on. Continued exploration and growth in his new techniques lead to working on bigger and bigger projects around the world. His talent and body of work are truly impressive and it’s inspiring to hear that creative ruts can sometime lead to reinvention (and success!).
Ekene Eijeoma began his talk by inviting us to turn to the person next to us and say three things: I see you, I value you, and I acknowledge you. This fleetingly simple interaction was actually quite powerful – it was a really interesting experience. He went on to demonstrate how empathy has driven his work. I was particularly impressed with his interactive installation Wage Islands. It visualizes which parts of New York City are really affordable for the people who live there and allows users to see how things change with increases and decreases to the minimum wage.
Michelle Higa Fox showed us many examples of the amazing work that her design studio has created. She started off talking about the idea of micro story telling and the challenges of reaching users on social media channels where focus is fleeting and pulled in many directions. Here are a couple of really clever examples:
Her studio also builds seriously impressive interactive installations. She showed us a very recent work that involved transparent LCD screens and dioramas housed behind the screens that were hidden and revealed based on the context, while motion graphic content could be overlaid in front. It was amazing. I couldn’t find any images online, but I did find this video of another really cool interactive wall:
One anecdote she shared, which I found particularly useful, is that it’s very important to account for short experiences when designing these kinds of interfaces, as you can’t expect your users to stick around as long as you’d like them to. I think that’s something we can take more into consideration as we build interfaces for the library.
Design for Hacking Yourself
Brooke Belk lead us through a short mindfulness exercise (which was very refreshing) and talked about how practicing meditating can really help creativity flow more easily throughout the day. Something I need to try more often! Alexa Clay talked about her concept of the misfit economy. I was amused by her stories of doing role-playing at tech conferences where she dresses as the Amish Futurist and asks deeply challenging questions about the role of technology in the modern world.
But I was mostly impressed with Lulu Miller’s talk. She formerly was a producer at Radiolab, my favorite show on NPR, and now has her own podcast called Invisibilia which is all to say that she knows how to tell a good story. She shared a poignant tale about the elusive nature of creative pursuits she called the house and the bicycle. The story intertwined her experience of pursuing a career in fiction writing while attending grad school in Portland and her neighbor’s struggle to stop building custom bicycles and finish building his house. Other themes included the paradox of intention, having faith in yourself and your work, throwing out the blueprint, and putting out what you have right now! All sage advice for creative types. It really was a lovely experience – I hope it gets published in some form soon.