Interactionary is a game show type format that allowes several teams to work on the same design problem, live on stage. Each team workes one at a time, and is given ten minutes to work through the problem. The goal is to expose the dynamic intangibles of design in progress, and allow an audience to listen in on the teams and observing how they work. Expert panelists provide commentary and judging for the event. The challenge is two fold: To make the session fun without being silly, to provide value, without getting boring.

The first incarnation of Interactionary took place at CHI 2000. Scott Berkun worked with three designers and usability engineers from Microsoft to define the details and make it happen: Chris Konrad, Debbie Cargile, and Sarah Zuberec. The four of them took this idea and worked it into something that could be done in 90 minutes, under the guise of a panel format at CHI.

As a member of the organizing committee of SIGCHI.NL's 2001 Summerconference I wanted to organize a local version of Interactionary. I submitted the proposal for a "Design Contest" to the committee and after they saw how enthousiastic I was about the experiment, they allowed me to set it up.

The event was scheduled late in the afternoon, at a time when the parallel sessions ended and everybody would be able to attend.

After an initial round of invitations (I sent email messages to over 10 companies/research groups/educational institutes/student bodies) I started the day with 1 (one) team. During the day, with the help of the chairman of the event, I called upon attendees to create teams. Half an hour before the event I had 4 teams: the original team of post-doc User-System Interaction students, 1 company team (ERP software giant Baan), 1 team of active SIGCHI.NL members ("team spaghetti"), and a mix&match team of people that had entered individually. A volunteer ("my lovely assistant") transported the teams to and from the "sound proof" room away from the main conference hall.

Three experts were kind enough to be members of the jury:

• Steven Pemberton (W3C)
• Gerrit van der Veer (former chair of SIGCHI.NL and member of the ACM SIGCHI Advisory Board)
• Joerka Deen (SIGCHI.NL's chairman).

• Process (phasing, stucture, methodology, flexibility, input of end-users)
• Outcome (originality, use of standards, applicability, aestetics, uability)
• Style (appearance, presentation, humour, communication with audience)

The problem was introduced by means of 2 slides: one with a global introduction, and a second with more details. The teams were given 10 minutes, and a copy of the slides to work with; after 5 minutes the projected slide would be replaced with a 5-minute warning slide, later a 1 minute slide with sound, and finally a slide saying "TIME!" and more fireworks.

The problem read:

Design the interface for a system that helps you find friends on the grounds of the internationally famous pottery holiday colony "Baking in the sun".

Well, the team that was best prepared (USI, the original team of post-docs that had prepared for the event) scored 63, and ended 4th and last. They all wore black clothes, explained their process, had a team member gather field data with a microphone, but they failed to gather points on Outcome. The company team (Baan) and the active SIGCHI.NL members (Spaghetti) both scored 64 points and shared 2nd place. The Baan team scored on Process and Outcome, the Spaghetti team on team effort (this was the only team that consisted of 5 people, the other teams had 3 members). The mix&match team gathered 67 points, maybe because of their hilarious solution ("give users coloured flags and have them stick these in sweatbands worn around their heads") and maybe because I lost my independant status and openly supported this courageous team :-) They won the campy Cup but have to return it before the Autumn conference to be handed out to the next winner.

It was great fun to do, and judging from the responses I got afterwards, the audience enjoyed it very much!

The only flaw in the design of the event was the fact that the "user population" (the audience) doesn't stay the same for every team, but "learns" from previous interviews.
Especially the Spaghetti team suffered from the fact that the audience had been interviewed twice already: every question was answered in a way that gave them no guidance (Q: Where do you want to use the system? A: Everywhere! Q: Who do you want to find specifically? A: Everybody!).
Maybe appointing a new selection of the audience as the user population will help, but that also takes away a part of the interactive experience...

It looks like we'll have another go at the next conference, planned for November 2001. The descriptions on Scott's website proved to be of value to remind me of some of the organizational aspects (such as inviting a jury, oops!).