Speed is the enemy of design
And other takeaways from Interact Amsterdam 2019
Amsterdam. Aside from the occasional hit n run for a broodje rookworst on Schiphol Airport, I had not been downtown for the last 6 years. Quite a long time, considering I worked and part-time lived in this artefact of the past for nearly a decade. This time however, I had a good reason to visit the capital of Holland: It was the very first edition of the Interact conference.
I worked on a few projects some years ago with the agency which was organising the event: Nomensa; and have been following the company and its events ever since. It is a strategic design agency that brings a holistic mindset to the table and think, say and act on it. And they organize neat events too…
Hence, I did not have to think that hard when I had the opportunity to visit good ollie Amsterdam, which also enabled me to meet some friends from VodafoneZiggo. Killing birds with one stone. Later a wee bit more about birds.
Onwards to the talks, cause this intro has been way too long. The organisation did a great job with the selection of speakers and the curation of topics. After being welcomed by Simon Norris of Nomensa, Eva Deckers kicked off the event with an extremely interesting talk on why designers should be building AI & how data enabled design helps. She is the Director of Data-Enabled Design and Design Strategy at Philips, and gave the audience behind-the-scenes insights on how Philips uses Adaptive Intelligence in its various Care Path user journeys, resulting in care that is tailored to the individual. By combining qualitative contextual insights with datasets on usage, Philips is able to evolve these products in an open and continuous way.
Eva was followed by Alastair Campbell who reminded me and the rest of the audience of the importance of digital accessibility. It is refreshing to be confronted (again) with the importance of designing products for people with access needs, whilst knowing that the accessibility maturity of the products and services you work on are at a low, low level. He gave some great tips on how to embed accessibility into your sprint, so it becomes a more of a second nature.
Next on stage was Sonja Radenkovic, who is Head of UX and Design at TomTom, the company who brought satellite navigation devices into the cars some time ago. And yes, the company still exists. They shifted their main focus from devices to building partnerships in the automotive industry by delivering mapping software, with a focus on autonomous driving cars. Sonja gave a talk on the future of leadership, and reminded us that we have to dare to care: Care about people, teams and peers in a time in which it sometimes seems that it is all about speed and delivering. She challenges the incremental development mindset of Fail fast Fail often and promotes design that bring value and impact, by stating that speed is the enemy of design. It might very well be that we get the wrong things faster, when we focus so much on optimization for speed and delivery.
Speed is the enemy of design: when we optimise for speed and delivery, we might just get the wrong things faster.
The Design Leadership topic continued with the talk of Lisa Anderson — No more heroes or victims. You might have crossed the path with a UX rockstar designer somewhere in your journey : The designer that parachutes in, disrupts, rattles the cage , claims success and leaves to the next highest paying job while not contributing on the long term strategy, value and impact (Frustrated, Chris?). We should avoid heroes because they don’t scale. Lisa outlined a set of + 10 principles that is used within the leadership team of online travel giant Booking.com, and pushes designers and leads to become stewards of empathy and responsible, thoughtful design. Data informed, not purely data-driven so we minimise intended and unintended consequences due to algorithmic bias
Hannah Tempest closed the day with one of the more fun and well-crafted presentations I have seen lately. She draws a parallel between Darwin’s The Origin of Species and the product life cycle of apps. A comparison that works surprisingly well. Both organisms and apps are constantly competing for resources. It is merely a matter of time that an app dies and is replaced by another application that fulfils its users’ needs: Extinction is the rule, not the exception.
This decline of its life cycle is due to the lack of resources that are needed for maintenance, improvements and modifications. New variants and adaptations might occur in its ecosystem, opening the door for innovation. Darwin wondered during his trip to the Galapagos Islands about the variations of beaks from island to island and realised that these adaptations made birds more fit to survive, as they could find specific resources. I told you I was coming back to them birds right? Apps adjust over time as the initial needs changes, and digital disruptors find new spaces where there is no competition, enabling them to prosper rather to fight for resources in an already packed marketplace. This is comparable with the constant flux of organisms into new spaces, replacing other species in those spaces. When jotting this down I realise this all sounds less fun than it was in real life, but heck, we have a Triple Diamond that can help us flagging the need for adjustment and disruption from a strategic point of view!
What resonates with me from this day are two themes. The first one is around people. As the industry changes at a high pace, we should care about the people around us and guide them and ourselves in self-awareness and a growth mindset. Tech is meant as a means to an end — not as the main driver.
The second theme that echoed throughout the day, was the need of stepping back once in a while and focus on value and impact of a design, not only on delivery. We like to go totally bonkers with experimentation and launch POCs and MVP in order to incrementally find out what works and what not. But maybe, just maybe we should care more for our designs and focus on building the right stuff…..
