Gretchen described it well%u2014"There's Synthesis and synthesis." In the Research phase, during the interpretation sessions, we do in fact visually sketch out other relevant models (sequence, flow, physical, etc.), and I believe that the very act of sketching is always synthetic. But you said "your Research stage includes other, smaller but no less significant, synthesis activities", which isn't exactly true in our case. I would argue that they are less significant as synthesis activities than the activities we do during consolidation. This is because the sketching that we do at this point is primarily for communication and understanding, not synthesis.
I also liked Gretchen's point about story%u2014"You need to really craft your findings to capture all the nuances that lead you to a design direction." This storytelling can actually be done earlier in the process to actually drive and define the design direction. In our process we use a process that we call visioning%u2014basically a brainstorming process that centers around group storytelling. We "walk" all of the consolidated data to prime our brains, and then with a group of people, we tell the story of "Based on what we now know about the users, what could the new world look like?" If you start your design direction with a story, it makes it very easy to continue that story throughout the design phase and into your deliverables. David Rondeau Design Chair Twitter: dbrondeau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=40670 ________________________________________________________________ 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
