For a designer “Mood Boards” can help a client visualize abstract concepts which are too difficult to represent through words. It usually fits into the process somewhere after wireframes (a low fidelity version of how the product elements might come together) and before higher fidelity design mockups. Elements that can be explored in the mood board include photography style, color palettes, typography, patterns, and the overall look and feel of the site. They also can help to create emotional attachment and a frame of reference as well as to identify missing cultural contexts or branches of generating or exploring new ideas.
Visual design is most definitely a part of the user experience process but it is often only utilized in a distict phase in development, usually at the end. I see the necessity of visual design as becoming a part of the whole picture. The boards could be used in context of user research focus groups to help elicit needs beyond the functional design research or they could also be used in a way to identify unknown aspects of the product and market -- to identify, research and define. Ongoing visual design engagement throughout the development lifecycle can also help to personify brand and avoid some wordy marketing speak statement. You should be able to identify your brand without a logo.
It is common for a development team to rush straight into the production of a detailed specification, without a strong understanding of user needs and the benefits that the project will deliver to the business. Mood boards can help define visual values to those elements of the product which are intangible and are not always quantified and measured. This also helps to build consensus and generate a shared vision of the product within a team.
Mood Boards, however, are not just used in design, they can be used in multiple disciplines. It is useful for big picture thinking by creating a collage of people, places and ideas with similar look and feel to represent a direction. Because it’s loose, clients won’t get hung up on details. However, some clients will want to see the detail instead, so you will have to interview or even work collaboratively together to get a sense of this. Often times it is easier to start with a list of adjectives and build multiple boards to create distinct differences. This process is a visual way to help communicate the user experience to a client who may not know how or where to begin and will help to include them into what they may consider a “magical” process.
This technique helps to facilitate:
• A defined direction
• A bridge to close the gap of unknown processes
• A saving of time and money
Flickr has a dedicated group demonstrating mood boards for inspiration:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/inspirationboards/
Utilizing Mood Boards in your next client meeting may be a useful strategy and result in a better engagement with people who relate better to a visual than to a verbal conversation. The visuals on the board will create energy paths or an interrupted path by color and contrast of graphic elements, but either one will help to facilitate better communication.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
It Takes a Piazza
There is an old Italian song with lyrics I have discovered through a Portland writer, Jay Walljasper, “If you don't hear voices in the piazza when you wake up in the morning, then you know something is wrong.” The buzz in the piazza is human connectivity.
In ancient Italy, the core structure of life and architecture was built around these central public squares deeply connected to the daily life of cathedrals, government buildings and today, sidewalk bars and cafes. Afternoon siestas or leisurely evenings are often spent strolling in these squares, catching up with friends or sipping potent cups of espresso. Children chase pigeons and the elderly lean on their canes as they contemplate their next chess moves. If Italy is a body, the piazza is its heart.
Every day I am always online; most of it for work purposes, but I also connect with many of my friends and family through my computer and programs, because it's the easiest way for all of us to keep in touch. In that way, social networking provides a means to stay connected to people you actually know in "real" life, without having to live in the same neighborhood. If you are like me, it’s so easy to get into mode of doing everything online such as talk, collaborate or play games. It seems the more I have signed up for, the more I have to check up on things and be online. More often than not it’s more convenient than doing something in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.
The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.
Ten years ago, this boundary did not even cross my mind while I was chatting with people online from Italy. For me, it was an amazing experience to learn about new cultures and make new friends. I distinctly remember one conversation because the “friend” I was chatting with after a few minutes politely excused himself because he said he needed to leave for the piazza to meet his friends. He explained to me that the Internet was just a muse but his friends in the piazza were “real”. At the time I knew something was missing, but what could I do, this was, after all my culture and something I identified with because I live and breathe this world of technology.
In some ways, I think the virtual social world is helpful to many of us, myself included, who are shy in real life. But, despite the gratification one gets from doing his or her socialization strictly via the internet can make it seem like actually hanging out with people isn't necessary, which I have realized has become my problem. I feel too isolated from the world beyond my computer.
Ray Oldenburg suggests in “Celebrating the Third Space” that we need to gather back our sense of community. He says social life in most societies rests on three elements: home, work, and the "third place". If we mindlessly destroy the third place -- the piazza, the coffee house or sidewalk cafe -- we end up expecting home and work to fill this big, gaping hole.
Recently my Mom was reminiscing about life in the 1950’s era. She described a strong sense of community where everyone in the neighborhood would simply abandon their regularly scheduled lives and gather together to have a barbeque and socialize with each other every weekend. She said it was never a question of what you were going to do, but rather with whom. I realized the “piazza” was actually here at one time. What happened? This sounded like the “third space”, the piazza, I have experienced many times in my foreign travels. In Sardegna, my Husband and I discovered that if you linger for more than five minutes admiring a garden for example, you will be ushered into someone’s home for dinner without even time to realize that you are in the company of a perfect stranger. But then you realize you are never a stranger in Italy.
Our lives have become very private and competitive. I believe we need to reconstruct the infrastructure of our human relationships. I suggest shutting off the computer and help create opportunities for people to care about each other again by learning, connecting and sharing. Italians say, “Chi trova un amico, trova un tesoro (who finds a friend, finds a treasure). This plays out in everyday life in the Italian piazza, which carries greater depths of meaning. Piazzas serve as a community center, market and town common all rolled into one. People are the treasures of the piazza.
Many architectural students are instructed, while studying abroad, to read a piazza landscape for its meaning — either in their parts or the way they have been stitched together through the years to create a whole. Piazzas are layered, complex and interesting puzzles where connections are not always that apparent at first. Every piazza holds the belief that all of life should be approached as a work of art, not simply as tasks to rush through on the way to the next thing.
In the user experience discipline, I feel privileged to be the one to uncover the complexity of human needs when it comes to technology. Sadly this part is often overlooked as a “nice to have but not necessary” in requirements gathering. If we slow down to actually think about our projects as models of wholeness like the piazza, the results will be like a work of art revealing the true purpose. Traditionally, business models follow three principles:
1. Analysis
2. Strategy
3. Change
What most businesses don’t understand however is that knowledge itself rarely leads to change. If we want our products and processes to be useful and change peoples’ lives, then we have to put people first. When we can make them see something first, understand how it makes them feel, then change can happen. The secret of success to any project is to put human feelings first.
The results of our work should be like a piazza in which they create possibilities like watching water spout in a fountain, the feeling we get from looking up at an astonishing ancient church, relaxing at a café, soaking up the human drama unfolding all around, and where you feel intensely linked to the flow of life and engaged in the world.
In ancient Italy, the core structure of life and architecture was built around these central public squares deeply connected to the daily life of cathedrals, government buildings and today, sidewalk bars and cafes. Afternoon siestas or leisurely evenings are often spent strolling in these squares, catching up with friends or sipping potent cups of espresso. Children chase pigeons and the elderly lean on their canes as they contemplate their next chess moves. If Italy is a body, the piazza is its heart.
Every day I am always online; most of it for work purposes, but I also connect with many of my friends and family through my computer and programs, because it's the easiest way for all of us to keep in touch. In that way, social networking provides a means to stay connected to people you actually know in "real" life, without having to live in the same neighborhood. If you are like me, it’s so easy to get into mode of doing everything online such as talk, collaborate or play games. It seems the more I have signed up for, the more I have to check up on things and be online. More often than not it’s more convenient than doing something in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.
The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.
Ten years ago, this boundary did not even cross my mind while I was chatting with people online from Italy. For me, it was an amazing experience to learn about new cultures and make new friends. I distinctly remember one conversation because the “friend” I was chatting with after a few minutes politely excused himself because he said he needed to leave for the piazza to meet his friends. He explained to me that the Internet was just a muse but his friends in the piazza were “real”. At the time I knew something was missing, but what could I do, this was, after all my culture and something I identified with because I live and breathe this world of technology.
In some ways, I think the virtual social world is helpful to many of us, myself included, who are shy in real life. But, despite the gratification one gets from doing his or her socialization strictly via the internet can make it seem like actually hanging out with people isn't necessary, which I have realized has become my problem. I feel too isolated from the world beyond my computer.
Ray Oldenburg suggests in “Celebrating the Third Space” that we need to gather back our sense of community. He says social life in most societies rests on three elements: home, work, and the "third place". If we mindlessly destroy the third place -- the piazza, the coffee house or sidewalk cafe -- we end up expecting home and work to fill this big, gaping hole.
Recently my Mom was reminiscing about life in the 1950’s era. She described a strong sense of community where everyone in the neighborhood would simply abandon their regularly scheduled lives and gather together to have a barbeque and socialize with each other every weekend. She said it was never a question of what you were going to do, but rather with whom. I realized the “piazza” was actually here at one time. What happened? This sounded like the “third space”, the piazza, I have experienced many times in my foreign travels. In Sardegna, my Husband and I discovered that if you linger for more than five minutes admiring a garden for example, you will be ushered into someone’s home for dinner without even time to realize that you are in the company of a perfect stranger. But then you realize you are never a stranger in Italy.
Our lives have become very private and competitive. I believe we need to reconstruct the infrastructure of our human relationships. I suggest shutting off the computer and help create opportunities for people to care about each other again by learning, connecting and sharing. Italians say, “Chi trova un amico, trova un tesoro (who finds a friend, finds a treasure). This plays out in everyday life in the Italian piazza, which carries greater depths of meaning. Piazzas serve as a community center, market and town common all rolled into one. People are the treasures of the piazza.
Many architectural students are instructed, while studying abroad, to read a piazza landscape for its meaning — either in their parts or the way they have been stitched together through the years to create a whole. Piazzas are layered, complex and interesting puzzles where connections are not always that apparent at first. Every piazza holds the belief that all of life should be approached as a work of art, not simply as tasks to rush through on the way to the next thing.
In the user experience discipline, I feel privileged to be the one to uncover the complexity of human needs when it comes to technology. Sadly this part is often overlooked as a “nice to have but not necessary” in requirements gathering. If we slow down to actually think about our projects as models of wholeness like the piazza, the results will be like a work of art revealing the true purpose. Traditionally, business models follow three principles:
1. Analysis
2. Strategy
3. Change
What most businesses don’t understand however is that knowledge itself rarely leads to change. If we want our products and processes to be useful and change peoples’ lives, then we have to put people first. When we can make them see something first, understand how it makes them feel, then change can happen. The secret of success to any project is to put human feelings first.
The results of our work should be like a piazza in which they create possibilities like watching water spout in a fountain, the feeling we get from looking up at an astonishing ancient church, relaxing at a café, soaking up the human drama unfolding all around, and where you feel intensely linked to the flow of life and engaged in the world.
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