This year, I’ll be attending the EUROIA 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. This year’s theme is “Beyond Structure”.

One thing I’m participating (and helping with) is the IA Jam Session on Friday night, organised by Theba Islam. The IA Jam Session is a whole evening during which you can showcase your achievements and share experiences, tips, tricks, and advice.

I’m planning on entering some of my deliverables as well, although I’m not sure what yet.

I’ve started a discussion on the London IA Ning website here for everyone to discuss their deliverables.

Are you going to EUROIA this year? Will you be participating in the IA JAM? Leave a comment below.

On Monday 15th June, I headed over to the Conchango offices near London Bridge to attend the June London UX bookclub. We were set to discuss Dan Saffer’s Designing Gestural Interfaces: Touchscreens and Interactive Devices.

I was lucky enough to receive one of a handful of free copies that Leisa Reichelt had to give out from O’Reilly. What was even more amazing was that I’d actually finished the book beforehand.

We were lucky to be treated to a short excerpt that Leisa had filmed at UX London from the man himself. Unfortunately he was travelling with his family and wasn’t able to attend the bookclub. His short message stated that he felt he had missed some important things from the book, mainly context is incredibly important, you need to consider accidental triggers and we all need to think about gestural standards.

We split into small groups to discuss what we felt about the book. Some of the topics we touched on were:

• A TED Talk on a new prototype called the Sixth Sense. This really is the future of gestural interfaces, where the wearer can really interact with the world, in a context that is appropriate to the environment.
• Filler in the book, the chapters on anatomy came under scrutiny from some (personally I found them very interesting and valid) and the large reference section at the back.
• Accessibility and Gestural Interfaces. I personally felt there wasn’t enough information on this topic. How we can create alternatives for those with limited abilities seems to be a big open question.
• Documentation and what was appropriate for deliverables in relation to gestural interfaces. The concept of Lava Notation was incredibly interesting but unfeasible for most people. We discussed how video and imagery could be appropriate in this context.
• Standards for gestural interfaces. There was concern from some over companies filing patents for gestures. General consensus from the group was that it would have been great to have a library documented as per Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone’s book and accompanying wiki for Designing Social Interfaces.
• The gestural interface of the Wii vs. Xbox 360. The Wii seems more of a social, novelty platform, with limited games which make the most of its gestural capabilities, whereas the xbox 360, whilst more traditional has a larger range of games which is more suited to playing on your own or across a network. Context certainly plays a big part in this.

We re-joined as a big group and discussed some of our findings in more detail. Some of the other concepts mentioned were the emergence of higher fidelity prototypes, the importance of narrative and iterations taking place with the client present as opposed to separately. Unfortunately I was too busy talking to make more notes!

Dan Saffer’s Designing Gestural Interfaces: Touchscreens and Interactive Devices is a practical book that I can recommend to anyone interesting in learning more about gestural interfaces. However, I believe there is still a long way to go in the field and what’s definitive now, is outdated tomorrow. Hopefully there is going to be an online component to this book which starts to document and expand on the gestural standards that are in the book as well as encourage discussion and innovation in the field.

Thanks to the Conchango team for hosting us, Leisa Reichelt for organising and everyone for attending. I really enjoyed the evening. The next two bookclubs are scheduled for August and October, where we will be discussing Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert and Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-centered Products and Services by Kim Goodwin.