This year, I attended IDC for the first time. It is, much differently as compared to CHI (which feels like war), for instance, incredibly harmonic. It appears that all the attendees are somehow on the 'same page'.
Clearly, that is an result of the venue being in rather a niche of interaction design academic conferences, but still the effect of this circumstance is remarkable. The discussions after the talks appealed encouragingly informed - most people seem to have the same body of literature, the same theories, and the same visions for future research in mind. Grantedly, this year's instance of IDC lacked no self-reflective critique, and the question was raised whether including children in the design process would help at all - given the other option of involving trained, professional designers.
Most of the projects I saw dealt with childrens' interactions with tangibles on tabletops, storytelling, co-design, or a combination of the these. Methodologically, the research was reported in episodic, anectodic ways, and I do not remember a single report of a quantitative study. Again, the atmosphere was comfortable - everybody seemed to have agreed on qualitative, small-sample-size studies. But with nobody on the other side of the spectrum, proposing alternatives, will the field evolve?
This gets me thinking about 'niche conferences', and what my expectations of a conference are. I am not looking for a comfortable space to justify my research and receive a pat on the back for it. Personally, I am looking for the more disputative ones, in which my thoughts get torn apart and may, at some point, be reassembled in new ways. As for this particular one: IDC 2010 was comfortable, and I hope that will change in the future.