Immobile. Static. Fluff. Over simplified. Minimalistic. Artificial. Plastic. At least that’s how I feel about them. There I said it.

Anthropological ideas of situated action suggest that the complexity of human activity varies from situation to situation. Personas in this respect by showcasing a unified image fail to capture a more complex range of possible activities which can be very inspirational. The form of representation is often a few textual paragraphs and a picture which is questionable at its effectiveness in developing empathy. If the aim of such a design activities is to inspire team members then I would say that more powerful methods of context mapping exist which look beyond the boundaries of a person into the environment. These empathy encouraging methods can also be strengthened with the use of video which Jacob Buur has been exploring thoroughly in Denmark. Furthermore even richer empathy can be achieved by means of team participation when designers join ranks with users in eliciting their latent needs through design research. Given the choice between uniform personas and more granular, video based, participatory scenarios my preferential vote is cast on the latter.

There has also been quite some interesting debate on this topic elsewhere with voices from both sides:

• Why Shouldn’t I Kill Personas?
• IXDA EVENT AT YAHOO – Personas suck! Personas Rule
• Persona Non Grata – Steve Portigal
• Persona Non Grata – Dan Saffer

Last week I posted the Interactive Sketching Notation. This emerging visual language contains my own approach to drawn user interactions with pen and paper. The general idea behind this notation is the desire to visualize user interface states as well as user actions in a clear and rapid manner. Thanks again to all those who made this possible and please let me know if you find it helpful or have any recommendations. If this inspires your own approach to sketching, I would also love to see some samples of how people use this.

When it comes down to prototyping (or any other desing artifacts) people are often accustomed to taking a stand on fidelity as an absolute that applies to the whole prototype or document. On the two extreme opposites it’s either a very rough prototype (such as a paper model or sketch) or on the other end it’s a highly functional and detailed prototype (such as working code with proper visual styling and relationships). However, to think of fidelity in a more granular fashion opens up some doors.  Say on the same interface representation or prototype, some areas can be left less defined and some become more detailed. This gives the designer more flexibility to choose where to spend his design attention on. No longer is the designer forced to detail out a particular area to the fidelity which the document or prototype proposes. Instead, some areas are detailed and some less. Just thinking that our design documents and prototyping tools could support this granular level of fidelity a bit better, as opposed to dictating it to us.

Just carried over a discussion onto the IXDA forums around the adequate number of alternative sketches from where it picked up, only for it to come back where it originially came from. Still continuing to ponder how to chart out, visualize or measure a design space over time.

Just did a quick user test for a project here at TU Delft. One thing which I did different than usual was the placement of some transparent paper over the interface print outs. This helped to keep the interface more stable as people interacted with the model.

First Post? Yup. So what is the whole reasoning behind this endeavour? Basically, I’m looking forward to write up and share my thoughts on interface and interaction design (more so on the former).  Perhaps these ideas will take the form of theoretical or philosophical write ups within the Thoughts category. Or perhaps I shall try to entertain you with occasional Javascript experiments, pushing the limits on my technical capabilities. Maybe on other days I will draw up a quick sketch to communicate more abstract design thoughts. Or, maybe I’ll just find something of interest out in the vast space of the Internet or someones backyard. Here we go …