On Saturday, I had to go to IIDCon. Having been in the past, I knew kind of what to expect. However, it is always interesting to see what the new speakers have to say. The first presentation was by Todd Miller, the Wawa Director of Digital Marketing. He started at Kutztown University, unsure of what direction he exactly wanted to take. He knew he wanted to do something which was a mix of computers and art. This led him to work in the web industry. He told us he worked in many different places, such as for the company which works on South Park, Harley Davidson, Victory Brewing, Warner Brothers, and Sherwin Williams, among others. Eventually, Todd Miller moved into Wawa. At Wawa, it started by just emerging into the web environment, however now it has exploded into all aspects of the web. Along the journey, he said he learned a few important lessons. These lessons were as follows:
1. There is no clear or obvious path of what you'll do
2. You will meet a lot of people, be nice, and be humble
3. Nobody knows what they are doing, be true to what you want
I thought these lessons were really applicable to my personal life and were echoed in most of the other presentations.
The next speaker was actually a team of husband and wife, Christine and Phil Newswanger. Together, they run Modo, which is a design-build web consultancy which works with mostly non-profit clientele. The common theme between all of the clients was their need to make communication. The design company itself focuses on the idea of simplicity, which they described as the subtraction of the obvious and the addition of the meaningful. In running this company, the couple also had three life lessons they came across in design. The lessons were:
1. Forget passion, pursue curiosity (always ask questions)
2. Keep working at it, keep producing work and connecting with people
3. Risk delight (try new things)
In my opinion, the most interesting lesson they spoke on was the idea of risking delight by doing things outside the norm. Generally, I try to avoid risks so hearing that I should because it can be very beneficial kind of made me try to reframe my perspective on risk.
The third speaker was Doug Logan. His presentation was on the business of being right and explaining how to work on being persuasive. He started off by saying that research has the ability to bring others to your side of thinking. Therefore, we should use data to convince others of what we believe to be right. He also gave 3 types of research to use to persuade now:
1. Design thinking. He also recommended a resource I would like to try, which is a design thinking pamphlet by IBM.
2. Industry reports, which are a great source of data.
3. Spy tools, which allow for you to see all marketing and display ads for various companies.
I found this talk to be very interesting and relevant to a class I am taking where you work with a real client. I hope to use many of the tools he suggested in the future, although I found the spy tools to be most interesting.
The final speaker was Bri, who I remember seeing when we went to visit the design studio in spring. She does a lot, being a partner and designer of Shake and Shift, the president of the central PA AIGA, and organizer for Shine Lancaster, and an instructor at Thaddeus Stevens, among so much more. Her presentation was mostly focused on the idea of sharing ideas and learning, and how important that is. She had many tips on how to work on sharing knowledge:
1. Set up expectations, create a foundation to stand on
2. Create an intention, what is the purpose?
3. Hold space: hear people out, and make them feel heard.
4. Knowledge is more than what we study, it comes from
5. You get out what you put in
She also gave general life tips:
1. You can't be everything to everyone
2. It's okay not to know
3. It is a two way street
4. Meet people where they're at
I also enjoyed this talk. It was a nice reminder that we are all human and can only do our best. Sometimes it is hard to forget all of the tips she laid out.
Overall, I thought this years IIDCon was very interesting. Although many of the presentations share common themes, there is a lot of information I will continue to take with me moving forward.
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