To all the interaction design applicants, there may be ambiguity on how we define the role of interaction designers. We hope this post may shed some light on what we are looking for.

Digital design is evolving

There's not much interest in designing a tree of static web pages anymore. We're being called upon to design sophisticated digital experiences across multiple devices and contexts. Interaction design is no longer primarily about information science: it's visual design + information design + motion design + pattern recognition + systems thinking.

This kind of work requires a rare individual.

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The Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, the Jet Age, the Space Age and the Information Age - every technological era has brought about profound effects on socioeconomic and cultural conditions. They've reshaped human behavior and reset reality.

But, before the full effects of each of these technological developments have taken hold and fully permeated the collective understanding, people and businesses undoubtedly found themselves navigating a strange "in-between" time - a time where future visions are uncomfortably mingled with legacy artifacts and pre-existing expectations.

Today, in the Connected Age, technological innovations are bringing about seismic shifts in our reality every day. The dust is far from settled, and perhaps, it never will be. For businesses and brands this uncertain and unpredictable landscape is wrought with danger. Red herrings, pitfalls and fruitless dead-ends surround us, while opportunity is elusive.

But fear not, Larry Johnson (Odopod's Associate Director of Strategy) and I (Director of Brand and Strategy) have been hard at work cataloging the common mistakes, collecting helpful techniques and distilling best practices to survive and thrive in today's in-between times. We've compiled them neatly, into a presentation of course, and would love the opportunity to share them with you, our industry friends and peers at SXSW 2012.

But we need your help. Please vote for our SXSW session: Danger is Everywhere: Illuminating common pitfalls of marketing's in-between times and take a peek at some example slides here.

This preview is just a taste of what's to come. We promise to keep it short, sweet and useful so send us a vote and we'll see you there.

There is an incredible amount of potential stored within social networks and the Internet of Things.

On projects at Odopod, we've scored site contributors based on their social activities. We've provided tools for our clients to hold conversations in Twitter and bring those conversations into their sites. We've generated countless shares and likes. And we've only begun to scratch the surface.

With the continued growth of data available to us via APIs and increasingly sophisticated open source tools, we're looking forward to more and more opportunities to skim a little data and shape it into something both fun and useful.

I recently presented some related research during a brown bag lunch discussion. Here are some highlights.

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Dead trees

I started my career in a building with a huge, warehouse-sized newsprint printing press. It featured a production room with pasteboard technicians, plate makers and camera operators - and was a beehive of activity everyday from 3 to 11pm. The distinct hum and vibration of the press could be felt in the body. From that single press room, over 300,000 copies of the daily newspaper were printed, cut and bundled in rapid order in the span of several hours.

For decades, publishing invariably ended with a scene like this one. Editorial meetings and ad sales led to writing, art and photography that flowed through to editing and production which fed the frantic scramble to make plates for ink on paper and finally to a multi-story behemoth that ate paper and disgorged portable, lightweight, inexpensive newspapers.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the hyperlink

In 1994, after a few years tenure as an editorial designer, I was assigned to my paper's online arm to consider how to design for the new-fangled World Wide Web, pre-Netscape. My natural first reaction was horror. The web was really ugly. Typography? None. Imagery? Barely - and only if it could be compressed into a 5k gif file. Layout? Laughable.

But something about the web was special and that something was the hyperlink. Unlike type, art and layout, which were invented for print, the hyperlink was the web's unique secret sauce. It was the fundamental idea that enabled bits to transcend ink-on-paper. For the last decade and a half, we have all been on an endless adventure powered by the hyperlink.

Today, web typography, imagery and layout have finally come along. Sophisticated visual expression has finally caught up. And along the way, the web introduced everyone to digital audio, video and the amazing possibilities of interactive media.

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On Wednesday, Microsoft released additional information about their upcoming SDK for the Kinect. However, if you don't want to wait for that release, there are some great alternatives available already.

To better understand the potential Kinect holds for retail and other installation work at Odopod, I've been exploring different ways to integrate Kinect into Adobe Air applications. We're using Air because it allows us to quickly build prototypes and explore this exciting new technology.

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Most conversations about mobile strategies include the following two perspectives: limited resources of devices require new technical approaches, and mobile use cases are different and demand unique content and application features.

As we’ve settled into our new multi-device lifestyles, a new perspective has entered into these conversations: finding different content at the same place on different devices is a problem and flies in the face of web accessibility and common sense.

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IWC.com features a great deal of content which includes some amazing videos. Two great examples of these videos can be found on the Aquatimer family page. Galapagos is an eight and a half minute video highlighting IWC's longstanding relationship with the Charles Darwin Foundation and includes some really incredible cinematography. Don't miss the footage of iguanas foraging underwater. A little further down on the Aquatimer page is a short animation demonstrating the engineering behind the depth gauge within the Aquatimer Deep Two. It is an example of how IWC uses video to educate customers about their watches.

Galapagos video on the Aquatimer page

As the second installment of our series on building IWC.com, we're looking more closely at how this video is delivered to both desktop and mobile browsers.

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An Interview with Robert V. Kozinets

As section editor of the “Digital Consumer” in the 2011 SoDA’s Digital Marketing Outlook I had the opportunity to speak with Robert Kozinets about his unique brand of online ethnographic research – netnography. An anthropologist by training, Robert is recognized as a pioneer of contemporary consumer research and is published in countless industry journals and is Professor of Marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto.

Briefly, what is netnography and how does it differ to traditional ethnographic research?

Netnography is cultural research adapted to the unique contingencies of the online environment. It is a cultural look at social media. Online, there is surely culture and community, but lots of things about culture change. Conversations are archived, for instance. Bodies are not present. "Location" becomes rather malleable. Identity is in flux. That means we need new techniques specifically adapted to this altered state of reality, a new state of culture. Netnography was devised for this purpose.

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IWC.com and the publishing system powering it are a new cornerstone for IWCs digital strategy. Given the goal that this system remain relevant for a minimum of 10 years (and what can happen on the internet in 10 years) technology choices were particularly important.

How do you future-proof a development like this?

For us, the logical place to start is...

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Recently, the teams at Odopod gathered together for a presentation on Mobile from our Director of Technology, David Bliss and Senior Developer, Lucas Shuman. They shared some interesting insights and statistics about the growing Android market.

"Android has overtaken Symbian as the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide and that there is a three way tie in the U.S. between Blackberry, iOS and Android. What's more, indications are that Android's market share will continue to grow in 2011."

In their Flash for Mobile presentation, David and Lucas help us, our clients and our industry better understand what this all means.

Check out their presentation here »