Fluxible 2013: Recap

Last year I wrote a series of detailed posts about sessions at the Fluxible conference in Kitchener, Ontario. This year I was a volunteer at Fluxible #2 so I was unable to take as good notes. I had to keep dashing out of sessions to put drinks on ice and so on. But I got the gist of things and in some ways, it was an even better way to attend the conference, as I was less lost in the weeds and reflected more on the big picture. So here's my scattershot and/or 10,000 foot view of what was going on at this year's Fluxible.

Warning: I am basing this post off my notes, but I can't guarantee that I'm representing every speaker completely accurately. A particular problem may be omissions since I was not always in the room.

The conference started with a series of five minute talks. Steve Baty started us off by talking about the nature of innovation - from the old meaning of the word (insurrection, rebellion) to its meaning as incremental improvements such as those practiced by Toyota, which constantly pushes ahead with an empowered workforce and small steps in manufacturing and design that enable it to make the best cars. The next speakers talked about disruptive change requiring a new attitude. We were reminded to not focus only on users, but to also research "near users" (people who use a similar product) and non-users.

Trip O'Dell talked about the changing demographics of mobile users and how we need to adjust our thinking. He said previous heuristic expertise is becoming obsolete. He warned that designers are becoming more distanced from their users - up till now, it was "20 year olds designing for 20 year olds": designers tend to be rich, educated, tech savvy, and early adopters of technology - what he calls "high agency users". But now, increasingly, mobile users are in poorer countries, and users are often poor, less educated, and functionally illiterate. He calls these "low agency users". These users aren't just in developing countries: he said that 15% of North American adults are functionally illiterate too. Italy and Mexico have especially high percentages of low agency users.

Low agency users are usually not of low intelligence: we just need to show rather than tell. The main things that need to change are the text-based nature of UIs and icons that are rooted in our culture.

O'Dell pointed out that the current trend in UI design, flat icons, was inspired by transit language in airports: those icons pointing to baggage pickup and so on. Those icons are big, bright, clear, and meaningful across cultures.

He also noted that a new trend among apps for low agency users is playfulness. For example, the Chinese app WeChat, which has 550M users, has a feature where you can shake your phone to connect to other people who are shaking their phone at the same time.

"Low agency countries" tend to have an ownership culture, where people want to own rather than rent. Netflix would not do well there.

Diana Wiffen of Quarry Communications talked about how to design winning digital experience design strategies.

Here are speaker Konrad Sauer's notes on the conference: link.