IDEO

Last week we had the head of interaction at IDEO, Danny Stillion, in studio. He did a two day workshop with us and gave a great lecture on Thursday night. I really enjoyed his time with us — it was insightful and invigorating. I was having distancing issues between myself and "those users over there". His workshop allowed me to pull the two back together. It was great to go out into the field and do some research. It's really fascinating all of the different methods that work best for user research — exploring things besides interviews. It's amazing what you can learn about someone from having them take photos or "make" things in their environment.

I did a bit of this type of research for Design for Democracy, but had a major disconnect between that time and now. This workshop really brought all of that back into my mind. Am I really that old? What is happening to my memory?

The work they are doing at IDEO, as well as their process, gave me a lot to move forward with. It was perfect timing.

Some images from the workshop, can be seen at Kelly's Flickr page.