FITC Amsterdam

Katrin and Steffen were attending FITC Amsterdam this year. A conference about „Design. Technology. Cool Shit.“. At least this is what the FITC website says. And it was absolutely correct: The two conference days were packed with speakers covering many different aspects of what can be done with the current state of technology regarding different types of media. But more important than technology throughout all talks was the role that humans play in the processes of creation and perception.

But how was this conference valuable for two unicorns working at Mayflower?

UX at FITC

First, there were two great UX talks held by speakers from Shopify and Google. The Shopify talk was covering the difference between unity and uniformity in large company design systems (and why you should go for unity). David Hogue from Google, on the other hand, talked about the relationships of an Interaction Design Model and Psychology (you can find his slides here).

… and collaboration

Furthermore, collaboration was part of many talks. How important collaboration, trust, effort, and fun are when working together to produce outstanding work. For Mayflower, as a company working with agile teams, this is interesting and important.

We know something about the phases that a team undergoes from the start of a project until hopefully working correctly together. We know about the significance of psychological safety. But we tend to forget that those things can not be „made“ but that they have to happen (and that there is no guaranty for that). 

You cannot simply tell people to trust or promote each other. Trust and being supportive is something that has to be earned. Steffen wrote a blog post about this topic: Creativity, curiosity, craziness – the real superpowers of human cooperation.

Cool Shit

And finally, there was this sheer, mindblowing amount of „Cool Shit“ (AI, art, design, AR, sound, code, light, more or less mixed together) being showcased by digital artists like OUCHHH or companies like Red Paper Heart respectively badass speakers like Gavin Strange, Justin Maller or David OReilly. 

Most of their talks had very personal, emotional content, and the speakers revealed the highs and lows, insights, and lessons learned of projects or even their whole careers.

What will our two lovely crazy display.land-loving unicorns make out of this? Who knows … 

But it surely will have an impact on their future work.