Here's what I love about the interaction design community: we care about the future. And not only that, but we're arrogant enough to think we can do something about it.

I'm still coming off the high of the Interaction Design conference in Savannah. Just like the two previous conferences, I'm full to bursting with ideas, motivation, inspiration, empowerment, and hope. There's something very un-conferency about the event—it's more like homecoming for brainiacs or a spiritual retreat where beer is served. I don't get as much intellectual stimulation in the whole rest of the year put together as I do in these four days.

The first conference in 2008 was an opening shot—we're here and we're strong! The overarching theme was empowerment: how to get designers involved early in the development cycle (ideally as early as strategic meetings) where we could influence what gets built, not just what it looks like. But in just three short years, our ambitions have snowballed. The conference has rapidly morphed from a support group for misunderstood creatives into a crucible of big picture design thinking and innovation.

I blame the philosophy majors. A disproportionate number of us are now interaction designers, so it's no surprise the conference has become more about the theory than the practice of design.

The theory that most interests me is the one put forward by both Ezio Manzini at this year's conference and John Thackara at the 2009 conference. Both men argued passionately and (I thought) persuasively that the solutions to our social and environmental challenges are all around us, but they're being done at the small, local, community scale. Thackara urged designers to seek out and take inspiration from these innovators. Manzini's proposal is to study them and find a framework for replication. Furthermore, they argued, these types of innovations—urban gardens, cooperative housing, shared streets, alternative trade networks, bamboo bicycles—are signs of a new emerging economy based less on profit and consumption and more on quality and relationships.

I always come away from these talks feeling equal parts inspired, intimidated, and resentful at being told it's up to me to change the world. I also heard plenty of negative reactions like: "This is totally unrealistic: who's going pay us to do this work?" and "These types of projects don't scale," and "You still need government for regulation and accountability."

I'm a little disappointed by the naysayers. Sure, there are plenty of good reasons to doubt that dramatic and large-scale social change can start from such tiny seeds. But I can't help feeling that if we want big change, we have to imagine it first. It's obvious that many of the economies we live with now—fossil fuels, unlimited corporate growth, income inequality, health care—are unsustainable. I'm willing to entertain "unrealistic" and "unprofitable" ideas if they result in more equitable and sustainable systems. We talk a lot about embracing risk. Well, let's embrace a little intellectual risk, too.

It's taken me a little while to work out what Manzini and Thackara were really saying: it's not (necessarily) designers who will change the world, it's the design process. The Big Idea from the Interaction conferences is that design thinking is a problem-solving framework that can be applied to almost any kind of problem. The tools we use—reframing, concepting, sketching, iteration, prototyping, and testing—can be adapted to any situation with effective results.

This isn't a new idea, I'm certain. What's new is the opportunity to evangelize this message to a more receptive audience in corporations, government, NGOs, and to our own clients and colleagues.

No doubt there will be calls to make the Interaction conference more practical and less theoretical. But I hope it continues on this trajectory and keeps challenging us to THINK BIG.

But that's not all, folks . . .

Check out recaps from other Interaction10 attendees:

• Callie Neylan
• Chris Avore
• Derek Chan
• John Kolko
• Johnny Holland - Day 1
• Johnny Holland - Day 2
• Johnny Holland - Day 3
• Krystal Higgins
• Matt Nish-Lapidus
• Sarah G. Mitchell

[ Kim Bieler wrote this article and she welcomes your comments. ]