This issue is a tad delayed.

But to make up for it, it has a lot of goodness from Interaction18 in Lyon. IxDA's community led events have become something of an annual fix for me and I see these as a place to discover the directions our practice is headed for, a sum total of voices from around the world. Albeit a bit more American/Euro-centric (something the organisers did well to balance).

The three things I heard again and again were:

• (Unintended) Consequences

• Facebook

• Speculative (Design)

🔔 Talking of Alan Cooper - we have the man himself coming in for a rare appearance in India on March 8th (Thu) at DesignUp's 1st event of 2018, co-hosted by the newly revived IxDA Bangalore chapter. Hope to see you then. In the meantime...

#IxD18 - Explore the future, craft the details — blog.nordkapp.fi

Sami Niemelä's round up (Sami was co-chair for Interaction16 at Helsinki) of Interaction18. My favourite quote: "To me, it really sounds like convergence in between digital and physical product design. Industrial design has been aware of things like triple bottom line for a decade now, architecture far longer. Saarinen famously said one must consider the next larger context — chair in a room, room in a building, and so forth.

It’s up to us to make it real, and complete. No one’s coming to do it for us."

Cultural bias in design(ers) - Can being African make you bad at design?

Having lived and worked in distant lands for decades, Farai's talk comes as no revelation - and it was beautifully articulated. It mirrored some of my own journeys: of trying to fit in different cultures (even within my own country), seeing folks trying to be what they weren't—and ultimately realising and celebrating the differences that make each of us unique and special. This is the deck - Sami's article has more details and link to the talk.

#IxD18 - Katie Swindler: Animation in UX

There are tons of awesome talks on IxDA's vimeo channel - hard to sift through sometimes. As an antidote to the philosophical stuff, here's something pragmatic, practical and actionable (with plenty of action and movement thrown in).

#IxD18 - Kenya Hara: Make things unknown

One of my favourite talks from Interaction18 - and so very different from the one above. This one is philosophical, from the man behind MUJI and many other interesting design experiments...

#IxD18 - Misusability worksheets by @axbom

"While many people are talking about the "why" and "should have" of ethical design", Per Axbom wants to contribute to the how. From Per's workshop come these worksheets to support "an ethical, sustainable and inclusive mindset in any design process".

And... 10 tough questions we get asked — www.gatesnotes.com

Bill and Melinda Gates share their 2018 Annual Letter and answer the 10 tough questions they got asked in 2017. Beautifully articulated, thoughtfully crafted. Must read. The juxtaposition of Bill Gates and Alan Cooper was pure serendipity in this newsletter! (Ref - Alan sold Visual Basic to Bill & Microsoft)

Join Alan Cooper in Bangalore...

Until the week after,

@Jdallcaps

PS: hope to see some of you at Alan's session - I'm told we have only 30% of the seats lefts, just 3.5 days since announcing the event and a week to go!