kelvinluck.com

a stroke of luck

New This happened website

This happened is a series of events focusing on the stories behind interaction design. Having ideas is easier than making them happen. We delve into projects that exist today, how their concepts and production process can help inform future work.
This happened is an event originally organised by Chris O’Shea, Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Müller in London. I’ve been lucky enough to attend a few times and it is always really interesting and inspiring. The fact that the speakers talk about the process and the failures along the way is much more interesting than someone just showcasing their work. And I find the field of “interaction design” really interesting – a world somewhere between computers and the real world and somewhere between art and science.

So when Chris asked if I’d help out with a flickr viewer for the new website I was more than happy to help. I put together a little swf which is used throughout the site. It connects to the Flickr API (using as yet unfinished and unrealeased as3 version of flashr) and grabs photos matching certain machine tags. Depending on where in the site you are the swf displays relevant photos (e.g. from a particular city or a particular event) as a simple slidehow. The thishappened team can easily choose to display any photos that attendees have uploaded to flickr with relevant permissions. And they keep editorial control over the content via a special “auth” machine tag which they can generate through their CMS. It’s all pretty simple but it’s a nice way to bring user generated content to their site easily.

This happened is branching out and encouraging people to host events across the world so keep an eye out for one near you (or even set one up yourself) and if you get the chance make sure you attend.