Over the last years I have noticed that many books and articles talk about the usefulness (or not) of personas, delving a little into the actual production and design of the persona as well as defending it’s usage. Very few explicitly define some of the activities that occur within the design research phase. It was Jared Spool that mentioned the real value of personas being the actual process of engaging with users and developing empathy towards their circumstances and experience interacting with a product.1 The following article grew out of a conversation with Nathan Curtis of Eight Shapes (author of “Modular Web Design“) when I offered to contribute what I called a “Mood Map” to the Unify Documentation System. Let’s start.

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I read Marshall McLuhan years ago when I was knee deep in media theory and cognitive psychology, but it took a trip to the IA Summit in Memphis last week to bring that back – and I immediately began thinking about the materials, medium and methods we choose to use in our ideation and exploration phases and how it impacts our designs and solutions. … »

This February is the second annual Interaction Design Association (IxDA) Interaction 09 conference which is being held in Vancouver, British Columbia in conjunction with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Dave Malouf, one of the founder’s of the IxDA, was kind enough to allow me to interview him recently about a workshop he will be giving, his take on the field of interaction design, and some thoughts about where the field is going. … »