A video of the talk I gave at Interaction 10, “Designing for Solitude”, is now available at the new IxDA.org.
Thanks so much to everyone who came along, for all of the feedback I’ve received since, and especially for the question and answer session at the end – it seems like a topic which resonated, which is all I could really ask for.
Look out for an article soon (hopefully in Interactions Magazine) which will build on some of the themes I started to explore here.
During and after Interaction 10, I had lots of comments and questions about the background music that was playing in the Theater (and in the other locations, most of the time) between speakers. So for those that asked, here’s a complete list of all the songs that were on that playlist.
Notes: this was mostly thrown together at 1am the morning that the conference started – hopefully that excuses any, er, “aberrations”. There was no real theme, it’s just a bunch of things that I thought would have a (sort of) universal appeal. And sound good coming out of really big speakers.
In total, this playlist ended up being about 8 and a half hours of music, shuffled randomly.
EDIT: one song that isn’t included in the list as it was played right at the end:
My Way – Sid Vicious
For the rest of the conference:
Disco Farah – Salvatore
Picture in a Frame – Tom Waits
Short People – Randy Newman
Everytime We Say Goodbye – John Coltrane
She’s The One – Caribou
Out There On The Ice – Cut Copy
I’m On Fire – Electrelane
Teen Age Riot – Sonic Youth
Strange Overtones – David Byrne and Brian Eno
Frenchy’s – Holy Fuck
Rock Steady – Aretha Franklin
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down – Bob Dylan
Cloudbusting – Kate Bush
Audax Powder – Polygon Window
Superfly – Curtis Mayfield
Hoppípolla – Sigur Rós
Motorcycle Emptiness – Manic Street Preachers
Knee-Deep In The North Sea – Portico Quartet
You Are My Sunshine – Norman Blake
Batyar (Bigmouth Strikes Again) – The Ukrainians
Fahrenheit Fair Enough – Telefon Tel Aviv
Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
Desperados Under The Eaves – Warren Zevon
Fire In My Heart – Super Furry Animals
Things Are Gonna Get Easier – Low Motion Disco
Heartbeats – Jose González
Winter Love – Robyn Hitchcock
American Music – Violent Femmes
Are You Lonesome Tonight – Elvis Presley
I Think I’m In Love – Spiritualized
Fall On Me – R.E.M.
Cosmik Debris – Frank Zappa
In The Neighborhood – Tom Waits
Sinnerman – Nina Simone
Reasons to Quit – Phosphorescent
Slack Motherfucker – Superchunk
Les Nuits – Nightmares On Wax
My Banjo And I – Hanggai
Step On – Happy Mondays
Mountain In The Night – Abdullah Ibrahim
Mockingbird Diet – Karl Blau
Goodbye – Ulrich Schnauss
Up With People – Lambchop
Paris Is Burning – Ladyhawke
Bird on a Wire – Leonard Cohen
Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus – Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin
Papa Was a Rodeo – The Magnetic Fields
Gymnopedies: La 1. Lent Et Douloureux – Erik Satie
Something’s Coming – West Side Story
Friend Of The Night – Mogwai
Collapsing At Your Doorstep – Air France
Dundas, Ontario – Caribou
Jump -Aztec Camera
Since ‘76 – RJD2
So What – Miles Davis
By The Time I Get To Venus – The Juan Maclean
I Wish – Stevie Wonder
The Boy with the Arab Strap – Belle & Sebastian
Hang Up Your Hang Ups – Herbie Hancock
Blindsided – Bon Iver
Highway To Hell – AC/DC
Little Honda – Yo La Tengo
Gogol – Gonzales
Ramblin’ Man – Lemon Jelly
Root Down – The Beastie Boys
A Minha Menina – The Bees
Do You Remember The First Time? – Pulp
Something Changed – Pulp
The Milkman Of Human Kindness – Billy Bragg
Big Time Sensuality – Bjork
Impossible Germany – Wilco
Sunday In Savannah – Nina Simone
Knuddelmaus – Ulrich Schnauss
Multiply – Jamie Lidell
Surf Solar – Fuck Buttons
Photographs Are Not Memories – Victor Bermon
Stoner Hill – Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band
Get Together – Tony Allen
Afternoon Speaker – The Sea And Cake
Channel 1 Suite – Four Tet Remix (of a Cinematic Orchestra track)
Fake Empire – The National
Starálfur – Sigur Rós
This Lamb Sells Condos – Final Fantasy
He Didn’t – The 6ths (& Bob Mould)
Wow! It’s Now! – Luke Vibert
You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
Your Hand In Mine – Explosions In The Sky
The Outdoor Type – The Lemonheads
Blue Monk – Thelonious Monk
Unfinished Sympathy – Massive Attack
Jackson – Brakes
This Charming Man – The Smiths
Train In Vain – The Clash
Jailbreak – Thin Lizzy
City Sickness – Tindersticks
Holy Thursday – David Axelrod
Stephanie – Buckingham Nicks
Rudy (A Message To You) – Dandy Livingstone
Continental – Robin Guthrie
It Ain’t Me Babe – Bob Dylan
What’s In the Box? – The Emperor Machine
Kennedy – The Wedding Present
A Girl In Port – Okkervil River
Sugar Mountain – Neil Young
Stereo – Pavement
007 -Desmond Dekker
Hey – Pixies
As The Stars Fall – The Cinematic Orchestra
Woodcat – Tunng
La Grange – ZZ Top
Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt – DJ Shadow
VCR – The xx
Heart Skipped A Beat – The xx
And Your Bird Can Sing – The Beatles
River Man – Nick Drake
Breathless – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Movin’ On Up – Primal Scream
During a conversation with a couple of friends a few months ago, it was suggested that I dust off and resurrect a project I worked on in the year 2000 A.D.: the first website for the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.
And so, in the interests of posterity and in the hope it raises a smile for a few people:
Being a nine year old site, not much works. Some of the pages, even at this stage, were still awaiting content (and this first version of the site ran off an Access database, which is no longer accessible.)
Saying that, there’s still some interesting content to be found, at least from a historical perspective. Particularly check out the definition of interaction design (found under “Why Interaction Design?”), along with the lists of the faculty and the “Explorer’s Club.”
This site was designed by Chris Downs (yes, that Chris Downs) and built by myself in two weeks. I’m sure Chris won’t mind me saying that the design is a pretty accurate depiction of where the web was in Y2K, and the code certainly isn’t any better.
Anyway, enjoy.
Interaction is the annual conference put on by the IxDA, and next February it returns to the city that hosted the inaugural event in 2008, Savannah. This year promises a program full of content as interesting as the previous years, and I’m lucky enough to have been chosen to try and contribute to that.
I’ll be talking around the idea of solitude: why it’s important as a mental state, why the products and services we use every day might be making it harder to attain, how some people strive for it, and how we might design to enable it. Plus, I’ll be judging the design challenge, among other things. Hopefully I’ll see you there.
I recently had the privilege of having an article published in the March/April 2009 edition of the ACM’s Interactions Magazine.
The article attempted to look at how co-creation can be a powerful technique in the design process, particularly within the realm of service design. Since services ordinarily involve a person-to-person interaction at some point in the delivery process, involving those people who are actually involved with delivery in the design and ideation process is important to ensuring a service is successful.
I try to illustrate this idea by looking at a case study which I think proves this: former employer live|work’s “Make It Work” project for Sunderland City Council, which looked at how existing community organisations might be better structured to help the long term unemployed back to work.
Interactions has kindly agreed to allow me to make a PDF version of this article available for download, which you can do here.
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