This past Wednesday, IxDA Los Angeles partnered with local design shop Almer/Blank (http://www.almerblank.com) to host a fun Halloween party! We invited guests to come dressed as their favorite website, application or device and we were impressed with some really great costumes. Some were simple and fun like the person who dressed as Apple. Other costumes included an iPod shuffle, a Wii, a "wicked user" and an interactive BBC home page with arrange-able Velcro modules! First prize went to a woman cleverly dressed as "Pirated software". The link to photos is included below.
We also had fun with a Halloween-themed persona creation contest. As we all know, good personas can be powerful tools to help us design better user experiences. Sadly, we don't often get time or budget to perform the user research to create them. To address this reality, our exercise was all about creating *provisional* personas based on observation and empathy, but no user interviews. Even provisional personas can help give everyone on a project a clear idea of who the user is so that collaborative conversations can focus on what's right for the persona. The contest was structured like so: You work for Target.com. Marketing has found a growing trend in online shoppers from the Zombie community. Since Zombies can't talk (and they'll eat your brains if you get too close!) no interviews were possible, but we wanted to explore how the exercise of creating a persona can help interaction designers get inside your users heads and ultimately create solutions that will satisfy their goals. Each team had 30 minutes to brainstorm as a group to develop a provisional persona for a Zombie that took into account any special considerations Zombies may need. After the session, the group's leader had to present the new persona. Obviously this was a bit of fun, but the exercise helped remind us all about how useful it can be to try to at least form a shared idea of who the user is and try to understand their needs and goals. The winning team captain and the costume contest winner both won a copy of About Face, by Alan Cooper. Check out our photos from the event: http://picasaweb.google.com/Angel.J.Anderson/IxDALAOctober2008#<http://picasaweb.google.com/Angel.J.Anderson/IxDALAOctober2008> IxDA Los Angeles would like to thank our gracious hosts at Almer/Blank for the fantastic spread of food and wine and for going the extra mile with fun Halloween lights and décor! Stay tuned for and announcement about the next IxDA Los Angeles in December! Kind regards, Angel Anderson IxDA Los Angeles ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
