From Business to Buttons
– an exciting event on how design can boost your strategy
Around 400 visitors, from all over the world, gathered for a two day conference in how design can generate more and better business. And of course Øresund IT was there, as a partner of the conference which was arranged by the company InUse together with the University of Malmo. During the different lessons and workshops we learned a lot about how design really can make a difference in mobile applications, systems and products.
Don Norman – interesting and engaged
It is easy to understand why Don is one of the world leading authorities in every day design. He gave two engaged and interesting key-note speeches, one about emotional design and the other about cautious cars and cantankerous kitchens. Don’s main argument is that it is when machines communicate with humans that the big problems start. We have today ways to communicate well with each other and also effective machine to machine communication. That’s why design today isn’t only about looks, it’s also about functionality. Don talks about how it would be if we could invent cars that communicated with the driver as good as a horse and a rider communicates with each other.
After listening to Don we all understand the great challenge designers have to help the industry create products and services that are intuitive, interactive and interesting.
A lot of more interesting knowledge
With a total of 30 different lessons during the two days, it would take too much space to give a full review of everything. One of the most interesting sessions was the one held by TAT (of course an Øresund IT member) about the mobile phone as a social tool.
During the session we were shown how users can interact between each other with an application sharing music. A group of users can connect to each other using a music application, and the funny thing is that you can’t skip the music your friends have decided to share with you. So sharing the playlist also becomes a way to learn more about music and also to have something cultural to discuss. Interesting knowledge and also a lesson that shows new demands within the field of social interaction.
The Øresund region – world-class within the field of human-machine interaction
After a conference like this it stuns me how many great opportunities we have in the region to really create leading products and services, much thanks to great knowledge about design. And I mean not only good design for applications, we also have really god industrial designers. This combined with one of the largest ICT-clusters in Europe gives me some really optimistic thoughts about future development. After all, we are all humans and we want products and services that are both convenient and give new ways to social interaction. And I think that having a conference like this, in Malmo, is one important step towards world-class in design and human-machine interaction.