Wallacespace, 22 Duke’s Road, London – -30th Nov to 1st Dec
The Mobile User Experience conference brings together innovators from all over the world to generate and explore new ideas within specific areas of user experience. These areas are focused around pathways – the on-going initiatives under research by MEX.
Fourteen final year Product Design students were invited to the event to help facilitate and stimulate thinking in each of the seven pathways being discussed over the two days; this involved pushing discussions in new directions and helping visualise ideas.
Pathway 13 Brainstorming - Using quiet design principles to reduce the visual noise of mobile interface design
A call-out pathway for us was titled ‘Expand mobile interactions with the neglected dimensions of sound and tactility’. This generated inspirational talks, especially from Jim Kosem, from Halfman Research and Design. He explained how they designed a very moving digital monument to victims of war crimes in Slovenia, educating school children by using a mobile phone to give a personal first-hand account of events. It concluded with questioning whether technology can also neglect a dimension of reality. Related to this pathway, Dimitrios Stamatis (studying Industrial Design) submitted ‘A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design’ as inspiration to other MEX attendees.
The event was concluded by every group presenting the ideas and concepts they had developed in the workshop sessions, in which there were some innovative ideas for new mobile interface directions (and some humerous deliveries).
Mark Taylor (studying Industrial Design) who attended MEX said “these (speakers) really helped me with my project direction, talks from companies like Jawbone and Nokia showed that they had a keen interest in emerging technology, and how they were looking to apply it.”
Another attendee Ben King (studying Industrial Design), working on a collaborative project with Sony looking at wearable technology said “I was inspired by the talk on user immersion and how people use devices. This is an area that would be great to look at in my project, potentially enriching and improving the device experience.”
Marek Pawlowski at MEX 2011
The whole group would like to thank Marek Pawlowski for inviting us to attend, MEX was hugely stimulating and valuable experience, giving a great insight to the research processes that come before product design development. The next MEX event is planned for 9th – 10th May 2012. Please visit the website for more information.
Many thanks to Emily Forest for photographs: http://emilyforrestphotography.com/
Mitch Gebbie – Level 3 Student, Product Design BSc
