Jon Dixon - Pretending for a living - why actors are all UX designers

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User Centred Design is all about putting the person at the heart of the design. To do this successfully the UX practitioner needs to understand both the psychological drivers of that person -- their motivations, needs and fears, hidden and expressed -- as well as the overall situation in which that person is operating. This can sometimes seem daunting.

But there is another group of people who have been doing a very similar thing for years -- actors. They too need to understand the (sometimes hidden) motivations of their character, their emotional and psychological complexities, and their background and environment. And they have strategies and techniques for doing this. Can we as UX professionals perhaps learn from these to better inhabit and understand our prospective users both from the 'inside out' and the 'outside in'?

A highly experienced interaction designer, Jon has been incorporating user centred design into web design since the 90s, utilising skills and techniques from both his previous career as a professional actor, and has practical experience across the whole spectrum of UCD activities, from ethnography through behavioural modelling, information architecture, wire-framing, storyboarding and prototyping to formative user testing, as well as the visual design and behaviour of user interfaces. Jon is currently Senior Interaction Designer at Bunnyfoot

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