Moodboards
I have used moodboards in several projects in the past, collaborating with the project’s design lead. Most of these moodboards included a lot of collaboration, and incorporated design cues the design lead wanted to explore as well as external site elements we felt may impact the final design.
They do help the design team explore and narrow design elements, but they can sometimes lead to difficulty when being explained to the client. I have seen clients who didnt understand that the moodboard was not the final design. To rectify some of this confusion, I have successfully presented moodboards in the same meeting as a wireframe review, which allows the client to put them into context.
I just read Bronwyn’s post Just Not In The Mood, and while I agree with moodboards smacking of uncompleted work, I do think they provide a value. I do agree with them being derivative and such, but is there a way we can conduct these design explorations in a meaningful way to document the path of our exploration to the final design.
I have been playing with adding design exploration elements(specifically external site elements) into my personas. It has helped explain the persona’s use of other sites, and I think it may have some value. The problem is personas become more like “user posters” and are not so portable…
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