CapCHI Activities

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View Interactionary 2004 highlights and photos

The background

An eager local CHI community gathered on October 22nd 2002 for the first Interactionary event held by CapCHI (SIGCHI’s Capital Region chapter in Canada). Based on the format established by previous Interactionaries at the CHI Conference and elsewhere, the event involved 3 teams each given a limited amount of time to solve a design problem in real time in front of an audience. As a notionally competitive event the Interactionary is entertaining, but its prime purpose is educational – to expose some formal and informal aspects of team design, such as organization, process, creativity, problem-solving and social interaction.

The format

Teams and panelists were briefed before the event, and provided with access to resources to support their understanding and performance. The panelists were given time to discuss the scoring format, with the intention of coming to a relatively consistent interpretation across the 3 dimensions for each team’s marks out of 10:

• Teamwork
• Process
• The Design

The order of appearance of the teams was decided randomly on the night. Each team was given the same problem (see Problem Statement below), with 15 minutes to tackle it. They were given warnings with 5 minutes and 2 minutes remaining, and were advised to spend the last minute describing their solution to the panel and audience. While the first team tackled the problem, the other two teams were hidden in a room out of earshot and eyesight. When each team completed its session, it was allowed to join the audience and encouraged to keep heckling of other teams to a minimum!

After each team’s session, the panelists provided a commentary and scores. After all sessions were completed final scores were calculated, generous prizes awarded, and we held a general discussion about the design activities we had seen, and elicited some feedback on the Interactionary.

The panelists

Ever erudite and articulate, our panelists provided commentary and scoring. They were:

• Alfredo Coppola, Venture Communications
• Professor Gitte Lindgaard, Carleton University
• Steve Macko, Cognos Incorporated

The Problem Statement: “The Collaboration Device”

The teams were provided with the following problem:

“You are to design a portable device custom-built for a geographically distributed design team of up to 6 members. The product priorities are:

• Awareness – who is where, what are they doing?
• Notifications and alerts of significant events
• Collaborative activities, such as editing”

The teams, the designs

The Industry Canada team had to drop out at the last minute. This left 3 teams who all threw themselves wholeheartedly into the spirit of the event, each with their own ‘dress code’ and theme music. We also saw variations in approaches to the problem, which is probably the feature of Interactionaries that most contributes to discussion and learning.

The funky Pixel Monkeys from Corel entered to the strains of ‘My Way’ – the Sid Vicious version, of course. Definitely creative, they spilled out of the box on all sides, and initiated the panel’s novel ‘fight count’ design process metric.

“What’s that smell – we mean ‘spell’?” was the response as Carleton University’s student Team C.R.A.P. emerged from whatever dank hole we had hidden them in, to the strains of ‘Hot Stuff’. Was it mere coincidence that the team members’ names provided the acronym for such revered design principles as “Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity”? Would the gods smile on them? By their own account a relatively inexperienced team, their strategy was to make up for lack of experience with a rigorous process, in particular a disciplined time-boxed approach.

The Cognoscenti looked neither stirred nor shaken as they laid a discreet table for 4 and proceeded in a relaxed manner to tackle the problem, sipping a fine red wine between discourses. Their suave exterior belied a focused and experienced team, and many were surprised at the amount of smooth progress made.

The learning

The Cognoscenti scored highest of the 3 teams, and much of the post-event discussion centred around the relative contributions of experience and formal process. The Cognoscenti admitted that they had carried out a few trial runs, then - realising they were just reaching the 'storming' phase of team development - a few more trial runs. So it would seem that not just experience, but actual practice of the specific format, paid dividends.

We also took home some learning about the Interactionary event (including: don't let teams near any horizontal flat surfaces - the audience can't see what's happening!), and had the traditional Interactionary debate over whether strict fairness or variety was of more value on the night. Not in any doubt, though, was that the Interactionary was a valuable and enjoyable format for this local Chapter.

To see other Interactionary events, or for information on how to run your own, see Scott Berkun’s excellent set of resources at http://www.uiweb.com/dsports/default.htm.

Thanks...